Voices Compact by ELI Publishing

Silvia Ballabio Alessandra Brunetti

Voices

COMPACT in Literature, Art and Global Issues

From the Origins to the New Millennium

Gruppo Editoriale ELi

Il piacere di apprendere

Costruire il futuro insieme 2

Il Gruppo Editoriale ELi offre proposte editoriali che coprono tutti i gradi e i rami scolastici, all’insegna della qualità, del rigore e dell’innovazione.

INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE

EDUCAZIONE CIVICA secondo le NUOVE Linee guida

Percorsi didattici con attività pratiche che mirano ad approfondire i principali strumenti di IA generativa per favorirne un utilizzo critico e consapevole.

Aggiornamento e ampliamento dei nuclei tematici attorno ai quali si articolano le competenze e gli obiettivi di apprendimento: Costituzione, Sviluppo economico e sostenibilità, Cittadinanza digitale.

EQUILIBRI

equilibri

STEM/STEAM, CLIL

#PROGETTOPARITÀ

Progetto di ricerca costante che mira a eliminare gli stereotipi di genere nei testi scolastici ponendo particolare attenzione alla scelta dei contenuti, a una valutazione iconografica ragionata e all’utilizzo di un linguaggio testuale inclusivo.

Attivazione del pensiero scientifico e computazionale, approccio interdisciplinare e laboratoriale, sviluppo della competenza multilinguistica, attraverso attività STEM, STEAM e CLIL.

INCLUSIONE

DIGITALE

Sviluppo di una cultura dell’inclusione attraverso contenuti accessibili e adeguati ai diversi stili di apprendimento.

Acquisizione delle competenze digitali e dell’alfabetizzazione informatica come aiuto all’inclusione sociale e alla cittadinanza attiva.

ORIENTAMENTO

EDUCAZIONE ALLE RELAZIONI

Approccio educativo e formativo volto a favorire la conoscenza di sé, delle proprie attitudini e delle proprie capacità, oltre a sviluppare le competenze non cognitive e trasversali necessarie per le scelte del futuro.

Gruppo Editoriale ELi

Percorsi incentrati sullo sviluppo di competenze relazionali che arricchiscono la consapevolezza del vissuto personale in relazione con la realtà circostante.

Il piacere di apprendere

Struttura del volume

Voices

COMPACT

Voices Compact offre un percorso cronologico della storia della letteratura in lingua inglese così organizzato:

L’APERTURA DI CAPITOLO

LE OPERE

• Immagini a confronto per introdurre The idea of the time con attività di Thinking routine. • Ideas for your map per link tematici utili per la costruzione del Colloquio dell’Esame di Stato. 4

THE ROMANTIC AGE

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas

(1776–1837)

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works

Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works

Nature: love it, or fear it?

PPT

Emotional learning Stepping in texts through moods and emotions

Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

THE IDEA OF THE TIME

• Presentazione dell’opera di cui si individuano Themes, Interpretations, Structure e Language and style. • Le opere narrative presentano in pagina il Plot, espandibile online. • I brani antologici, tutti registrati, sono introdotti da un videocommento per favorire l’immedesimazione (Emotional learning).

PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear Text bank Extra texts of authors

▼ William Turner, The Shipwreck (1805)

1 Nature can be varied and stunning. Look at the two paintings. What do they make you feel and think of? Add more words if you want to.

William Turner (1775–1851), a Romantic landscape painter, retained a lifelong passion for the sea. This painting may have been inspired by an actual shipwreck, or by a poem republished in 1804.

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Almond Blossom 1 What are the blossoms like? Do they form a pattern?

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

2 The sky is turquoise blue, and the almond tree is the first to bloom in spring; how could these details relate to Van Gogh’s nephew? 3 What feelings does the painting inspire in you?

• Full plot • The mystery of a sea story • The Rime, a Reverie

IN ACTION

Interactive analysis

Web quest

4 Are the seamen recognisable? Why?/Why not?

1 Listen on YouTube to Iron Maiden telling you the story; what strikes you about the music and the rhythm of their song?

5 Are the sea and the sky light or dark? Why? 6 If you were a seaman in this sea, how would you feel?

Which is which? 3 What is sublime? Tick! 2

animals grazing in peace

deep chasms

violent storm and seas

shepherds and country villages

volcanic eruptions

avalanches

harvests and gardens

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was first published as the opening poem of Lyrical Ballads in 1798; the ballad opens with a Latin quote that says that ‘there are more invisible than visible Beings in the universe‘, and describes a mariner’s, the Ancient Mariner’s, incredible journey at sea. The crucial event is the murder of an Albatross, and how the murderer, the Ancient Mariner, lives his journey over and over again in his endless telling of his adventure to strangers.

THE PLOT A Wedding Guest is stopped by a strange man, the Ancient Mariner, whose hypnotic stare obliges the Wedding Guest to listen to the story of the Mariner’s odd journey at sea. A storm drives his ship to the South Pole, in a nightmarish landscape of green floating ice. An Albatross arrives, and the ship is freed from the ice; the journey back begins, but after nine days the Mariner kills the Albatross for no apparent reason. The crew hang the dead Albatross around the Mariner’s neck; at rushing speed a phantom spirit, two deadly creatures on a ghost ship, Death and Life-in-Death, cross the Mariner’s path; they play dice, and Life-in-Death wins the Mariner. The other mariners drop dead with no visible cause and the Mariner continues his journey alone. After he blesses the water snakes, the Albatross falls into the water and angels and spirits come to the ship; he returns to his homeland, where he stays with a Hermit for a while. The story is now over, and the Mariner resumes his wandering as a storyteller of his journey to strangers, leaving the Wedding Guest ‘a sadder and a wiser man‘.

▲ Vincent Van Gogh, Almond Blossom (1890)

• The sublime = anything that is terrible in nature and causes pain and danger, but also pleasure.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890), a post-Impressionist painter, arrived in Arles, South France, in March 1888; the fruit trees in the orchards were about to bloom, and he was so excited by the light that he painted one painting a day of fruit blossoms. In 1890 he painted Almond Blossom, a delicate still life for his newborn nephew Vincent Willem.

168

Ideas for your map: NATURE

p. 247

169

The journey metaphor is a commonplace for life and man’s quest for knowledge, and Coleridge adds to it the dimension of the supernatural: the protagonist, the Ancient Mariner, loses his route and finds a bird, the Albatross, which he kills for no apparent reason. There are many inexplicable situations in the poem, such as the magnetic power in the Mariner’s gaze, the polar spirit following the Mariner’s ship, the skeleton ship, with Life-in-Death and Death, the coming back to life of the dead crew, and the sudden sinking of the ship. To make the story believable, Coleridge blends the supernatural with natural phenomena: the sun and the moon, the cold and the icebergs, the stagnant water, the slimy things crawling on the sea, and the rain falling. The more the telling goes on, though, the more what is known and is familiar vanishes, and even perfectly natural phenomena become part of an eerie and horrific world which has gained its own existence.

I CONTESTI

• The American Revolution • The French Revolution • The First Industrial Revolution PTT PDF

History narrated: The age of revolutions ( Digital resources, Study Booster)

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

1789 LEARNING DIGITAL The Romantic movement The good and brutal savage

1620

1775-83

THE 13 COLONIES

THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA

The Romantic Age: History and Society

In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic Ocean in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later known as the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company. Various settlements finally gave origin to the 13 colonies and then to the USA.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR

The New England colonies, or Northern colonies, grew out of the original settlements of the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts in 1620. In the Middle colonies, most colonists were of Dutch or German origin. In the Southern colonies the wealthy planters were of mixed origin and much of the population consisted of enslaved Africans. The first slaves for tobacco plantations had arrived in Virginia from Africa in 1619.

The Romantic movement Main themes of Romanticism

1793-4

English in action

IN ACTION 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 riot = rivolta / assemblea 2 to assert = dire / asserire 3 constituency= seggio / circoscrizione

The Industrial Revolution

The Romantic movement unofficially began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 ( p. 193), and developed with two generations of poets and new forms of the novel. Its influence extended to the US in the 1820s and into the Victorian Romantics. Emotions, self-expression and individual feelings were exalted over reason and the senses over intellect. The rediscovery of emotions was part of the reaction to Rationalism, and Romantic

After Kingthe Louis XVI convened Estates in order to raise The Convention abolished the monarchy, declared France a republic 1 Write correct word. the Three poets cultivated reverence for nature, individualism, idealism and an interest in the sublime. taxes the Third Estate (98% of the population) assembled separately in and ordered the execution of the King. The Reign of Terror 1 rebellion protest. In July,person the Bastille was stormed and taken by a Paris mob and decided by the Committee of Public Safety under the leadership of a rebellious Nature, imagination and escapism the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of Robespierre began. The execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793 2 independence Faced with the Napoleonic Wars on the Continent and the effects of the Industrial Revolution at thean Citizen. It assertedperson the principles of popular sovereignty. In Britain alarmed all European sovereigns and the Terror caused horror and home, many authors desired to return to nature and celebrated it in their works. They protested there was at first sympathy with the French revolutionaries. However, disgust also in many supporters of the Revolution. England led the 3 pollution against the ugliness of the growing industrialisation of the century: the machines, factories, theaBritish establishment, coalition against France in 1793. city especially the aristocrats, condemned the slum conditions and pollution. Nature was often seen as a ‘mother’ or even as an absolute. For revolution. 4 ugliness Wordsworth ( p. 192), nature was a God because Divine Power was intrinsic in nature. Through an , nature, artists could escape from an unsatisfying present into a better world. depressed area th Another escape route was the exotic, with real and imaginary distant lands of long ago and

mid-18 century

At the end of the 18th century the relations between the 13 colonies in North America and the mother country were not good because of the problem of taxation and representation. All this led to riots. At the Boston Massacre in 1770 five colonists were killed by British soldiers. At the 1173 Boston Tea Party, in protest at British taxes, a cargo of tea was emptied into the harbour by American colonists disguised as natives. In 1775 the war broke out, and on 4th July 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to Romantic artists, with the exception of Byron, were seldom adopt the Declaration of Independence. After the final IN ACTION victory at York (1781), Great Britain signed the Peace of actively involved in the political life of their time, but they all Across time and space Paris in 1783: Article 1 acknowledged the United States’ shared a keen interest in the development of a more egalitarian Who is afraid of as fairy tales ? existence free, sovereign, and independent. society, which was also stimulated by the French Revolution. In the Grimm Brothers’ second edition, the fairy tales became simple They searched for a more accessible and therefore ‘egalitarian’ moral lessons on good vs evil and all horror elements were either toned language in their poems, but their choices varied a lot. Some down or cut out altogether. In 1937, with damsels in distress, romance, looked for inspiration in ‘primitive’ forms of art such as ancient musicals numbers and formidable villains, Walt Disney’s film adaptations ballads and folk songs, others favoured complex forms such as made the ‘happily-ever-after’ theme the norm. After the Equal the ode and even long narrative forms. However, the variety of Rights Amendment for Women in 1979, fairy tales also changed; the choices shows that they felt free to explore with no rules and stereotypical themes of knights in shining armour and of wide-eyed and THEhelpless NAPOLEONIC WARS pre-established conventions in art. women were criticised. One more change came with James Finn Garner, who published Politically Correct Bedtime Stories in 1994. Hisestablishing work is a brilliant satire on the trend toward political correctness: After the Consulate with a coup d’état Napoleon The love for folklore and Gothicism the fairy crowned tales are rewritten that theyinrepresent a politically Bonaparte himself so Emperor 1804; hewhat fought against Scholar Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) coined the term correct adult would consider apowers, good and moral led taleby forthe children. Heroes various coalitions of European usually UK. The ‘folk spirit’, while Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm collected popular becomes viceversa, andNelson, most female characters savefinal their British fleet,villains led byand Admiral Horatio resisted until the fairy tales to describe the essence of a people, and as a means own lives with no help from PrinceThe Charming. Little of Red Riding Hood victory with Wellington in 1815. Congress Vienna of better defining the folk-spirit of the German people. In England, lectures the hunter on how she can solve her own problems without re-established the balance of powers that existed among European Shakespeare was rediscovered as a spontaneous, natural, any interference and Cinderella decides to forgo her makeover in powers before the events in France. and English genius ( p. 76). A ‘rage for roots’, i.e. a desire to favour of comfortable clothes. Work creative

1795-1833

1811-16

2 Did you have tales read to you when you were a child? What do you remember about them? How did you feel? Would you tell them to your own child, and how?

the dream, sometimes filled with supernatural events. Poets strongly believed in the power of imagination, seen as the source of poetic inspiration. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) presents the distinction between primary and secondary imagination ( p. 198), while Shelley’s Defence of Poetry (1840) presents the poet as a prophet; he guides humankind to a true CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY AND MANUFACTURINGunderstanding of reality and also to rebellion against THE all REFORMS forms of oppression and dogmas ( p. 211).

Structure and style

200

▲ L.J.M. Daguerre, The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel (1924)

3 Choose one traditional fairy tale and rethink it so that it is ‘modern’. What would you change about it? Draw your characters and make a cartoon. THE LUDDITES

Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797). Percy B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1820) reinterpreted the myth on new grounds, but the most significant representations of the Byronic Hero were Victor Frankenstein and his creature and alter ego, ‘the monster’ with no name in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus ( p. 224). The personality of the Byronic Hero has also inspired many characters in films.

Romantic poets rediscovered the power of (3) magic / imagination and stressed the role of (4) abstract ideas / senses and emotions. Imagination is associated with (5) powerful artistic creation / fanciful stories: the (6) poet / scientist is a prophet.

for the (18) French / American Revolution, and were convinced that (19) the consent of the governed / monarchical power was the basis for a well-governed society and that (20) a revolution / reforms (21) was / were needed to create an informed and involved citizenry.

Nature is seen as a (7) passive background / spiritual reality, and it is always (8) rejected / admired for its beauty.

Revolution and democracy

(9) Emotions/Reason (10) are / is fundamental in human experience, and the ideal model for sensibility is the (11) child / educated man together with the (12) good / brutal savage, characterised by (13) brutality / innate goodness uncorrupted by evil and civilisation.

Romantic writers also developed a taste for the return to (22) one’s national / a universal language and cultural heritage, with the myths and folklore of the (23) medieval / classical period; part of this interest was the interpretation of Shakespeare as the (24) national, spontaneous / perfectly-educated genius and the interest in the (25) study of the Classics / supernatural.

Writers like William Godwin (1756–1836), Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97 p. 176) advocated democratic government and the various social changes necessary to create an informed and involved citizenry.

Ideas for your map: EMOTIONS

The Romantic Age – The Romantic movement

p. 247

179

LE AUTRICI E GLI AUTORI • Visualizzazione rapida della biografia e della produzione letteraria attraverso una linea del tempo. • Presentazione della personalità umana e artistica nel Profile. AUTHORS AND WORKS Novel of Manners

Jane Austen (1775–1817)

LEARNING DIGITAL Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice

1775 Jane Austen was born in Steventon, a small village in north-east Hampshire, into a family of very modest means.

1785 Jane and her sister Cassandra were sent to a boarding school in Reading.

1786 KEY FACT They were withdrawn from the school as the fees were too high for the family; after that, they were educated at home.

1801 Her father George retired and the family settled in Bath.

WORKS

1802 Jane accepted a marriage proposal from Bigg-Wither, the heir to considerable estates in the area, but changed her mind the day after accepting it.

1805 Jane’s father died and the family found themselves in a precarious financial situation.

1810–17 KEY FACT 1806 1809 She revised her three The family They moved early novels and moved to again to composed another Southampton. Chawtown, three. a small country village a few miles from Austen’s birthplace. 1811 1814

Profile

Key words

As a woman writer, Austen found it difficult to have her works published. All her works were published anonymously, as it was not considered proper for a woman to try for popularity through writing. When she was young, Austen most certainly developed a taste for acting and comedies, which is reflected in the irony and extensive use of dialogue in her novels of manners. Austen was concerned with the sentimentalism, the exotic and the sensational that the Gothic novel had made popular, especially with female audiences. In her writings she refused to focus on what she saw as the excesses of ‘sensibility’ in favour of ‘sense’.

eloping

arranged marriage

dowry

sense

sensibility

landed gentry

a a marriage organised by families b running away to secretly get married c the use of reason and common sense d property or money brought by a bride to her husband on their marriage e excessive sentimentalism f upper class landowners Across time and space

Courtship a nd m a rria ges a s they used to be In Austen’s time, balls were fundamental for women to meet their future husbands; gentlemen would invite ladies to dance to court them but only after the lady’s parents had given their consent to the gentleman’s interest. 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is there anything similar in today’s world? 2 Compare the reality of marriage in Austen’s and Shakespeare’s works. Which author appreciates it most in your opinion? 3 When do you think marriage disappeared as a necessary step in a man and woman’s relationship in Western literature?

238

4 5

Sense and Sensibility

Mansfield Park

1813

1815

Pride and Prejudice p. 239

IN ACTION 1 Match each word/expression (1–6) to the correct definition (a–f).

LIFE

Sense and Sensibility DT31 How miserable I am!

PDF

He holds him with his skinny hand6, ‘There was a ship,’ quoth7 he. ‘Hold off! unhand me8 grey-beard loon9’ Eftsoons his hand dropt he10.

5 din: rumore 6 skinny hand: mano ossuta 7 quoth: arcaico per said 8 unhand me: lasciami 9 loon: pazzo

Interpretations

Ideas for your map: SUPERNATURAL/SUBLIME

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

In tutte queste sezioni sono presenti Mind map interattive utili per la sintesi e lo studio autonomo, volte ad un apprendimento realmente inclusivo.

p. 247

MIND MAP

social status and conventions

landed gentry

201

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

love and marriage

pride and prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy

Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley

Lydia Bennet and George Wickham

Mr and Mrs Bennet

deep lasting love

naïve love

excess of sentimentalism

isolation and irresponsibility

CHECK OUT

families • old • sentimentalism • negative • prejudices • model • landed • naïve

Pride and Prejudice gentry of early 19th-century England. Several (2)

from different social classes are presented in their interactions, in particular the Bennets through Elizabeth and Darcy, the heroine and the hero. for all unions as they overcome their pride and (4)

Their marriage becomes the (3)

freely; they also defy conventions to do so. The most (5) thinks about (6)

, while Mr and Mrs Bennet are an (8)

MIND MAP

Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 1 introduces the novel through a conversation between Mr and Mrs Bennet, who talk about a new neighbour.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

duty • irritated • visit • unmarried • asks • ignore • happiness her husband to (2)

Mrs Bennet (1)

Emma

1816 She started having health problems and died in Winchester one year later.

irony

excessive sensibility vs sense (reason)

dialogue

realism

marriage

wife and daughters could go on their own. She is (5)

▲ Another scene from the 2005

Now read the extract and check your answers.

film adaptation of the novel

Ideas for your map: LOVE/PRIDE

4 THE ROMANTIC AGE

THINKING SKILLS

IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Jane Austen was born in a complex historical moment, just after the beginning of the (1) during the war between Britain and (2)

The happy ending of Austen’s novels is the appropriate self-realisation of fully conscious individuals who have discovered their true selves. They have overcome prejudiced opinions and social conventions in the experience of reciprocal knowledge motivated by love.

45 LISTEN to a passage about the relationship between Jane Austen and her own time, seen in a new unorthodox way. Complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. You will hear the recording twice.

• Social class

(3)

. Some writers opted for

(4)

far from contemporary reality,

states in (5)

1 The Industrial Revolution caused more social injustice than any previous changes in means of production. 2 The taste for the primitive and spontaneous poetry totally supplanted the taste for refined verse poets. 3 Rebelliousness is a trait common to all English Romantic writers.

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

The relationship between the rich and well-bred and those of a lower social standing is at the heart of conflict. In Persuasion, the author explores the various aspects of class rigidity and social mobility; Anne Elliot, the protagonist, is witty and kind, and understands and respects the importance of making a good marriage.

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From Pride and Prejudice DT32 The difficult art of conversation (Chapter 18)

STORYTELLING

The social world that Jane Austen depicts in Pride and Prejudice is the landed gentry of early 19th-century England, familiar to her through her life. Although most of the places and characters are imaginary, they are faithful pictures of the social customs, manners and beliefs of the time.

WRITING

Characters

p. 247

Step 3 Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view. 2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about nature / sustainability. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English The beauty and the power of nature

239

246

Law Directive 2008/99/EC of the European Parliament to protect the environment

Physics Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction

Latin Bucolics – The locus amoenus (Virgilio, 42–30 BCE) De rerum natura (Lucretius, first century BCE) The principle of atomism

French Le lac (The Lake, Lamartine, 1820) In his ideal conversation with the lake, the poet finds consolation from the idea of mortality La Maison du Berger (The Shepherd’s Hut, Alfred de Vigny, 1844) The poet addresses nature but then turns away from it because it is indifferent to man’s destiny.

▲ John Constable, The Hay Wain (1821)

▲ William Turner, Vesuvius in Eruption (1819)

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay highlighting similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • nature as a friendly or deadly reality • continuity/discontinuity between the Age of Reason and the Age of Sensibility • the change of verse forms in Romantic poetry • the renovation of genres in Romantic fiction

• The Bennets: a middle-class family of modest income; they live at Longbourn House in Hertfordshire. Mr and Mrs Bennet have five daughters Jane, Elizabeth (Lizzy), Mary, Catherine (Kitty) and Lydia, from the eldest to the youngest. Jane is the most beautiful, Lizzy is well read and quick-witted, Mary is studious and pedantic. Kitty and Lydia are both gossipy and immature. Mr Collins, a pedantic reverend, is Mr Bennet’s cousin and future heir.

Ideas for your map: MARRIAGE/SOCIAL CLASS

3 The Luddites create a party, Men’s Power, whose slogan is ‘No machines more men’, and they win the special elections held in 1798 after the publication of Lyrical Ballads. They introduce laws banning the use of machinery in all fields, from agriculture to manufacturing. The movement of the Young for Progress oppose the government, both in Parliament and in the streets. Rewrite history and decide which group will prevail.

the double

Landscape and seascape painting was the first to show the sublime. The sublime was totally different from two other styles of landscape painting in Romantic art: the pastoral, with peaceful scenes of harvests and gardens, or the picturesque, with the charm of discovering the landscape in its natural state. While the pastoral and the picturesque show that mankind lives in peace in nature and can dominate it, the sublime, with boundless and majestic visions of nature, causes awe and terror.

Assess

way.

mystery / evil / folly

marriage / social class

Step 2 Focus on the idea of nature, and discuss what it represents for you and how people are expected to relate to it in today’s world.

1 The traditional and literary ballads have points in common but there are also differences. 2 The Gothic novel and the novel of manners have opposite characteristics.

Europe, she criticised

exploitation / science

supernatural / imagination

Step 1 Read this short introduction to Romantic landscape painting:

Compare

while Austen wrote about her own time. Like writers in totalitarian the situation but not in an (6)

independence / women’s rights

PROJECT

1 The French Revolution was a milestone in European history. 2 For William Wordsworth emotions are essential in order to know nature and man. 3 Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley features a prophecy of regeneration. 4 Ann Radcliffe combined the supernatural and rationality in her novels.

state, where intellectuals were prosecuted and letters

FIRST

• Happy ending

emotions / love / art

1 Do the following tasks about the theme nature / sustainability.

Justify

Britain lived in a state of tension similar to that of a totalitarian

revolution / rebellion / pride

the good savage / the child / innocence

1 The Industrial revolution changed the landscape of Britain. 2 The French Revolution caused mixed reactions in the UK. 3 The noble savage and the child are somehow similar. 4 William Blake uses symbols to present complex ideas. 5 John Keats’ poems anticipated the cult of beauty of the late 19th century.

and

THE ROMANTIC AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

nature / sustainability / sublime

Explain

Ja ne a usten a nd her own tim e

CHECK OUT

241

A FINE CAPITOLO

landed gentry

1 Answer the questions.

p. 247

• Revision area: un ripasso efficace con attività di collaborazione e condivisione. • Ideas for your map: presenta i link tematici fondamentali sviluppati nel capitolo, uno dei quali viene approfondito in un project e in una mappa con suggerimenti trasversali e multidisciplinari, come richiesto dal Colloquio dell‘Esame di Stato.

KEY WORDS

1 What difficulty did Jane Austen have in publishing her novels? 2 What did she think of the novels of her time? 3 What are the main features of the heroines of her novels? 4 How important is social class in her novels? 5 What are the main features of her style?

and to visit their

new neighbour.

1818 (posthumously published) • Northanger Abbey • Persuasion

social class and mobility

by his answers, and insists that it is his

as a father to think of his daughters’ futures and (7)

(6)

novel of manners

happy ending

their new neighbour, Mr Bingley, a rich

man who has recently rented Netherfield Park, but at first he tries to (4)

(3)

her. She informs him that their neighbours are all going to visit Mr Bingley, and Mr Bennet replies that his

Jane Austen taste for drama

Marriage is presented as a contract, in the context of the patriarchal system of inheritance of the time, which privileged first-born sons. The ‘rank’ (i.e. social standing) of the bridegroom, and the dowry of the bride were the most important factors when families arranged marriages. Complex legal rules prevented women from inheriting from their parents and hardly any profession was open to women. For them, a marriage was almost the only way to gain economic independence and respectability because an unmarried woman was socially inferior to a married one. For a woman, eloping was a scandal that ruined her reputation and also that of her family.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

couple who no longer care about each other.

T39 Mr and Mrs Bennet, an old couple 46 LEARNING DIGITAL Visual analysis

STEP IN

Describe

• Marriage

Jane Austen’s novels are usually set in the countryside, mostly in the south of England, in the stately houses of the landed gentry. This choice allowed the author to focus on the interaction of a limited group of characters, closely investigated from a psychological point of view. Common sense and realism are key aspects of her style, which is also characterised by lively dialogues and irony. Dialogue is fundamental to understanding the characters’ personalities, while irony is how the external narrator expresses her critical views concerning both characters and conventions.

and choose each other

example of a union is Lydia Bennet and George Wickham’s; she only

and he only cares about money. The other unions are somehow defective; Jane Bennet and Mr Bingley love

each other but are too (7)

PDF

Themes

Setting and style

snobbish – intellectual

1 Complete the text with the given words.

In Pride and Prejudice, Austen depicts the world of the (1)

Philosophy Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement, Immanuel Kant, 1790) Nature is not a mechanical reality but it has a clear purpose.

Italian La Ginestra (Giacomo Leopardi, 1845) The power of nature is opposed to the fragility of man.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

‘The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin4; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din5.’

Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic (1847)

rediscover one’s national language and cultural heritage, spread throughout Europe; it also meant a keen interest in myths and folklore, especially those of the Middle Ages and its art, architecture and oral tradition. The fairies, witches, demons and monsters of the medieval ballads reappeared in a new genre, the Gothic novel ( p. 182). Coleridge’s poetry also frequently takes a Gothic turn, as, for example, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( p. 200) and Christabel.

The invention which had the greatest effect on industrialisation was probably the steam engine. In 1769,and the child William Pitt’s government restricted the right of individuals to assemble publicly (Seditious Machines caused injuries and the The ‘good savage’ MIND Themes of Romanticism James Watt developed a way to use the power of steam to work machinery such as pumping engines. Meetings 1795) the formation societies or organisations that favoured political reforms Luddites, a radical faction, Individuals were now considered more important than societyAct, thanks to and Rousseau’s ideasofeven MAP destroyed These started to be used in mines, for digging machinery to deepen and extend the canal network. It tended to made them replaceable (Combination 1799). The latter made trade unions illegal. Positive actions in the social them as a form of protest because though the factory system partsActs, in a system. The Romantics 5 secret ballot = tiro / voto made production machinery more efficient. Simple machines such as James Hargreaves’s ‘Spinning sphere came with theand Factory Acts innature 1833, which they thought that machinery would believed in the natural goodness of men, instead. The ‘good savage’s the child’s and limited the hours children and women could segreto Jenny’ permitted spinning and weaving, two essential stages in the production of cloth, to beand speeded work in factories. Inspectors started being sent supplant the human workforce. emotions are pure can help human beings to find again the innocence lost in civilisation and to factories, and other acts were passed. 6 franchise = diritto di nascita / up. The use of natural water power from fast flowing rivers to operate urban the machinery resulted even because of a capacity Thefor problem of political representation first faced with the 1832 Reform Act; it abolished the The movement spread throughout life. The child wasinrevered wonder, which the adults had was to rediscover voto supernatural emotion national egalitarian individualism good savage nature: mother faster production. ‘rotten seats incollection, ParliamentSongs for constituencies that had few or no and voters (for example and escape England from 1811and to 1816, but was identity in their hearts; the innocence of the child is a cardinal point boroughs’, in William Blake’s of feelings society and rebellion and the child Thanks to the agricultural revolution and Britain’s success in international trade, many more peoplein a complementary relationship Manchester) no secret ballots, where it was easy for candidates to buy votes (hence the wordfrom cities suppressed with legal and military Innocence, compared with Songsand of Experience ( p. 185), and the ideal imagination became richer and invested in industry. The new industries attracted thousands of workers; Glasgow,with nature in William Wordsworth’s ‘rotten’). Parliamentary seats were extended, so that 22 new boroughs, mostly industrial towns, force. of the perfect communion poetry ( p. 193). Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester grew into industrial towns, which were dirty and polluted by the were represented in Parliament. The franchise was granted to property owners, mostly the middle CHECK OUT smoke and waste from factories. Individualism and rebelliousness class, and that meant that about 20% of men could now vote. Society was seen as a (14) negative / positive influence on man’s 1 Choose the correct alternative. The character that best represented the ideals of rebellion and independence was the Byronic growth and the (15) primacy of / subordination to rules of the formyour map: REVOLUTION p. 247 170 4 The Romantic Age – Key Facys The age of revolutions 171 the rIdeas omantic ovement Hero, the protagonist of many of Lord Byron’s works. The Byronic Hero was modelled on Milton’s individual was established; in literature this was seen in the Satan, which the Romantics saw as the real protagonist of the epic poem Paradise Lost, and on (16) acceptance / rejection of rules and embodied in the figures of the ▲ William Turner, A Water Mill The Romantic movement lasted from 1798 (publication of (1) Lyrical Byronic Hero and the Titan Prometheus. Byron’s own character and biography, with influence from Gothic novels ( p. 182). Examples of Ballads / Ossianic poems) to 1837, Queen Victoria’s (2) death / ascent to the throne, though its influence also stretched into the second similar characters in the Gothic novel before Byron’s works were Manfred, the ominous hero-villain From the (17) political / social point of view, Romantic writers half of the 19th century and to the U.S.A. aspired to an egalitarian society, in the wake of the initial enthusiasm of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), and the brooding, guilt-haunted monk Schedoni of

Now read the extract and check your answers.

It is an Ancient Mariner And he stoppeth one of three. ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering2 eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou3 me?

▶ John Wilson Carmichael,

4 parliamentary seat = seggio / seduta parlamentare

178

the Albatross.

15 The Rime is simple on the surface as it is narrated by an ordinary seaman, and is full of realistic details concerning the journey at sea, but Coleridge has shrouded the main events, such as the killing of the Albatross or the appearance of the ghost ship, in mystery. Many questions, especially those concerning the Mariner’s power and actions, have no answers in the poem. The work is therefore open to many interpretations, all of which are correct as the poem is deliberately ambiguous. 1 meeteth: arcaico per meets 2 glittering: scintillante • A discussion of morality: the Mariner commits a sin, the killing of the Albatross, and after 3 stopp’st thou: arcaico per do you expiating it, he preaches the moral of universal love for all God’s creatures. stop • A discussion of Christianity: the Albatross is identified with Christ, an innocent victim, and the 4 next of kin: parente più stretto Mariner’s eternal tale is his punishment for killing him. 4 The Romantic Age – Authors and works • A discussion of art: the Mariner represents the poet who looks for truth and knowledge and 202 finds it in the dreadful world of the imagination. This costs him his ordinary life.

Themes

by the Albatross. The Wedding Guest him. The Mariner confesses that he (9)

asks the Mariner what (8)

1803-15

period, where poets such as Alfred Tennyson ( Digital resources) are sometimes identified late THE TERROR THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVIasAND IN ACTION

English in action

is set free from the ice, and sails north, (7)

round the boat. The boat

He holds him with his glittering eye — The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath11 his will. […]

spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.

Interpretations

Publication

1606

PDF

, and the ship is (5)

CHECK OUT

Key Facts The age of revolutions

The French Revolution

convinces the Wedding Guest to listen to his story.

the ice. An Albatross arrives; the crew feed it, and it (6)

1 Complete the table with the correct information.

• Presentazione del panorama storico-sociale con gli eventi chiave. • Presentazione del panorama letterario-culturale con i suoi protagonisti, movimenti e generi caratterizzanti. The American Revolution

An Ancient Mariner meeteth1 three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and

to him. The Wedding

to listen to the Mariner; he is invited to a relative’s wedding which is about

to start, but the Mariner (3) A storm drives the Mariner’s ship to the (4)

Structure and style

• The supernatural

• awe = a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

LEARNING DIGITAL

flies • refuses • stuck • South Pole • killed • followed • mysteriously • troubles • talking The Ancient Mariner stops the Wedding Guest, and starts (1) Guest (2)

• The curse The legends of cursed men eternally travelling at sea inspired Coleridge to draft the Mariner as a damned being, not unlike the seamen in The Pirates of the Caribbean, a modern funny version of these myths. The Wandering Jew is the man who cursed Christ on his way to crucifixion, and the Flying Dutchman was the captain of a cursed ship that never reaches port. Both challenge the gods and are fated to tell their story to all those they meet. The poem presents a convincing psychological study of the Ancient Mariner, who, feeling desperately alone on open sea, wants ▲ Engraving by Gustave Doré for the to die, and suffers mental and spiritual anguish. The supernatural aspect of his condition is that 1876 edition of the poem, showing the killing of the Albatross. the Mariner is eternally trapped in the telling of his dreadful story, each time to a new listener. This is his curse. The Wedding Guest is changed into a ‘sadder and wiser man‘ after listening to the Mariner’s story. This shows that the supernatural gradually invades the space of the so-called ‘real’ world until the supernatural is the real world itself.

The poem is divided into seven Parts, and ends with a crucial or unexpected event; it is andetaineth one. adventure tale with a journey at sea characterised by incidents and disasters. It also combines elements of the epic poem with the use of verse and its narrative development, and of the traditional ballad with the use of the ballad stanza and supernatural elements. The ballad was a popular form from the Middle Ages ( p. 34); the renewed interest in folklore in the late 18th century led to the publication of several ballad collections, such as Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765 p. 174). The mystery that permeates The Rime is also due to the imitation of the style and themes of the traditional ballad, where the story is fast-paced and mysteriously told with no explanation or moral. The Rime opens in abrupt and third-person narration, and it develops through continuous shifting of scenes; inexplicable natural phenomena or spirits and angels throw the Mariner into the tragedy not of unhappy love, a typical theme of the traditional ballad, but of the mysterious reality of the supernatural. In the poem, Coleridge uses the ballad stanza, a four-line stanza rhyming ABCB, although refrains are absent and the stanzas vary in length depending on the narrative. The many sound devices and repetitions make it musical and dreamlike. The Wedding-Guest is

Themes ▲ Cover of Iron Maiden’s album

Key words • The beautiful = anything that is pleasant in nature and causes admiration and joy

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

2 Look at the paintings and answer the questions.

high mountain ranges

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

fear / death / fascination / delicacy / impotence / danger / powerlessness / horror / vastness / beauty / smallness / wonder / hope

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The poem opens with the Mariner meeting the Wedding Guest; the story moves forward quickly, with the storm and the nightmarish world of ice at the South Pole until the main event of Part 1 and of the whole poem, the murder of the Albatross. In the whole poem the event is narrated in the last stanza only, and the caption underlines its oddity.

LEARNING DIGITAL

Interactive analysis

PDF

THINKING ROUTINE

The Shipwreck

T31 The killing of the Albatross 37

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and their comments

#BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

Spanish Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1879) Nature as a symbol for life and love. German Hymen an die Nacht (Odes to the Night, Novalis, 1800) Man’s creativity is best developed in nature. 247

1 What is the Mariner like?

2 Why is the Mariner so powerful? 3 Why is the Wedding Guest so powerless?

10 Eftsoons… he: quello immediatamente tolse la mano 11 hath: arcaico per has

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

GLI APPROFONDIMENTI

We all love a good fight!

Gli approfondimenti presentano temi utili per lo sviluppo di una cittadinanza consapevole e per il colloquio dell’Esame di Stato attraverso lo stimolo del pensiero critico. • Across time and space: affinità tra fenomeni storici, sociali o letterari lontani fra loro nel tempo e nello spazio. • Rights for all: il tema dei diritti e della sostenibilità in riferimento ai Global Goals 2030. • The arts: opere artistiche significative per la comprensione del periodo storico-letterario e dei suoi protagonisti. • Women that made history: figure di grandi donne che hanno dato un contributo fondamentale allo sviluppo della storia e cultura del loro tempo. • Films for thought: film e serie TV per immedesimarsi, emozionarsi e approfondire temi e personaggi.

WOMEN THAT Britain‘s first women MADE HISTORY warriors

The two series Vikings and The Last Kingdom give a fascinating view of the Anglo-Saxon-Viking long-lasting conflict, their cultures and values. The popularity of the TV series lies in people’s fascination with the myths of the birth of a nation, swords, epic battles and the fight for freedom.

IN ACTION

Boudicca, the warrior Queen

They said of this...

Boudicca (33–61 CE) was the wife of Prasutagus, the Celtic King of the Iceni (a tribe in eastern Britain) and an ally of Rome. On his death in 61 CE, the Romans stopped respecting all the rights of the Iceni. When Boudicca opposed this, she was flogged1 and her two daughters raped2. Consequently, she brought together an army and led an attack that destroyed the Roman towns of Londinium, Camulodunum (Colchester) and Verulamium (St Albans). Over 70,000 Roman citizens died. Boudicca lost the final battle, and it is said that she committed suicide. Her statue shows her and her daughters riding into battle. She is celebrated as a universal symbol of freedom and fight against injustice.

A free womAn Boudicca, mounted in a chariot with her daughters before her, rode up to clan after clan and delivered her protest: — ‘It was customary, she knew, with Britons to fight under female captaincy; but now she was avenging, not, as a queen of glorious ancestry, her ravished realm and power, but, as a woman of the people, her liberty lost, her body tortured by the lash, the tarnished honour of her daughters.’

Vikings (2013–2020, six seasons plus a 2022 spin-off Vikings: Valhalla) Vikings was generally inspired by the 13th century Nordic sagas about legendary Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok and his descendants. He is a Viking warrior and farmer who wants to explore and raid more and more lands, and the series opens with one of the most significant events in the Viking invasion, the raid and destruction of Lindisfarne monastery in 793.

(Tacitus, Annals, 114–120 CE)

1 Tacitus reports Boudicca’s actions but also her own words; what is he highlighting about her?

The Last Kingdom (2015–2022, five seasons plus a 2023 sequel)

1 Organise a survey about the popularity of a TV series with teenagers, especially one about a mythical past with epic battles. The purpose of the survey is to understand what makes a TV series popular with young people.

THE ARTS

Shakespeare‘s female characters have fascinated not only viewers and readers, but also artists, who have chosen their most memorable scenes of love as subjects for their works. Juliet has been a favourite one; her statue in Verona attracts thousands of visitors and Hayez, one of the most famous painter of Romantic subjects, chose her last kiss with Romeo for one of his most celebrated works. The magical atmosphere surrounding Titania in Fuseli‘s painting is totally different, but once again the

Step 1 Prepare at least five questions. Use either multiple-choice questions, or a 1 to 5 scale (from ’very ▶ Statue ofHermia Aethelflaed, female figure looks fascinating and is the centre of the painting. Simmons‘ physically towers bad’ to ‘excellent’), for example: Tamworth Castle,

1 flogged: frustata 2 raped: violentate

above Lysander in the painting in the same way she is superior to him in herStaffordshire view of love.

Multiple-choice question How old are you? a 15 or younger b between 16–17 c 18 or of olderJuliet and the balcony, The bronze statue 1–5 scale question Verona, Italy How good is the acting in the TV series? Popular tradition elected this tower house (late 13th–early 14th 1 2 3 4 5 its balcony asgood Juliet’s house. The house was very bad not so bad century) and satisfying excellent

th at theas beginning Step 2 Give out your questions to as restored many teenagers you can. of the 20 century and in 1968

Costantini commissioned Step 3 Compare your findings; whichVeronese age groupartist (a, b, Nereo or c) is fonder of thewas TV series, and why? to make

Ideas for your map: HEROISM

From the Origins to the Middle Ages

Bridge, London

Aethelflaed (872?–918 CE) was the daughter of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Her marriage with Aethelred, Lord of Mercia, facilitated an alliance between Mercia and Wessex, the last Saxon kingdom to resist a complete Viking victory. When Aethelflaed’s husband died, she became ‘the Lady of the Mercians’, de facto queen of Mercia. She was Titaniaa and brilliantBottom diplomat and made important treaties. She (c. 1790)also by led Henry Fuseli armies, built fortresses, beat back Viking attacks andtoled Titania stands next theseveral seatedsuccessful campaigns into Danelaw. Today, more Bottom with his ass‘s head andthan 1,100 years after her death, onefairies. of theThe great forgotten figures in British surrounded by the history is emerging from the shadows. white female silhouettes stand out in the black background.

Shakespearean women fall in love

the bronze statue of Juliet, now stored in a museum. A replica stands in the courtyard so that tourists can freely touch it.

▲ Statue of Boudicca, Westminster

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians

The Last Kingdom, an adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novels The Saxon Stories, is set around 800–900, when King Alfred’s Wessex stands alone, resisting the invading Danes. Uhtred, born a Saxon but raised by Vikings, is a fictional character in this violent era. In the hope of regaining his home, he decides to unite with King Alfred to combat the continuous Viking incursions. The dream of a single kingdom, England, appears for the first time in history. SURVEY MAKING

AGENDA 2030

p. 55

Hermia and Lysander (1870) by John Simmons

The Last Kiss Given by Juliet to Romeo (1823) WORK CREATIVE by Francesco Hayez

1 Boudicca’s revolt was ferocious and devastating, but she was the victim of brutal violence, too. Aethelflaed was a military

Hermia and Lysander are lost in Juliet and Romeo kiss for what will be their last kiss after their leader, but she also used the art of diplomacy. Write a short text following these guidelines: the enchanted wood at night, wedding night, in the half light of the early morning. He is about • How important is a person’s upbringing in shaping their future choices, including the negative ones? Draw your list of five key factors when everything is permitted, to climb out of the window as the Nurse enters the room in the (parents, friends, gender, wealth, etc.), and compare them. and they are surrounded by background to warn Juliet that her mother is coming. • Identify the two most mentioned factors, and imagine the life of a person shaped by these factors in a short text, or a cartoon. fairies. Lysander bows to Hermia as he tries to persuade her to sleep with him, under Ideas for your map: LEADERSHIP p. 55 the light of the moon, and she refuses.

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. Juliet’s statue 1 Where are Juliet’s hands, and what does her pose suggest? The Last Kiss Given by Juliet to Romeo 2 What does the first daylight from the window give prominence to? Titania and Bottom 3 Where are Titania’s hands, and what does her pose suggest? Hermia and Lysander 4 What do the lovers’ hands do? What does their pose suggest? Discuss 2 All these works of art present a love scene from a Shakespearean play but in different forms and tones. Compare the female figures to what you know about them from your reading of Shakespeare’s plays. Do you think that these works are a correct representation of these women in love? Why?/Why not? Web quest 3 Search the web for more images of Shakespearean love scenes in art. Can you see any recurring elements in the representation of men and women in love?

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

Geordie

StoryTelling

LE ATTIVITÀ CREATIVE

Love (in all shapes and forms) is better than no love at all • Mr Jay Gatsby is reported dead in all the most important newspapers of New York City, Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C.

• StoryTelling: l’arte del narrare per acquisire consapevolezza del proprio processo di apprendimento attraverso strategie che favoriscono l’immedesimazione e suggerimenti per un uso consapevole dell‘IA. • #BookTok: la letteratura per young adults si mette al servizio dei valori universali trasmessi dalla letteratura tradizionale attraverso i suggerimenti di giovani lettori.

The judge looked over his left shoulder, and said fair maid: “I’m sorry for thee, my pretty fair maid, you have come too late, for he’s condemned already”.

“Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain, this is not the chain of many. Stole sixteen of the king’s royal deer, and he sold them in Bohenny.”

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

2 Is the narrator involved in the story he tells?

WEB QUEST 5 Like other ballads, Geordie exists in many different versions. The folk singer and poet Fabrizio De André made a faithful version of the ballad, although it has a few variations. Search the web to listen to the song; what emotions does it evoke in you?

3 What is the atmosphere like? 4 Which lines are repeated? To what effect?

PDF

Digital resources, Study Booster

Discover top trending book recommendations

• Divide into three groups, and choose one of the impossible situations. Once you have written the interview/conversation, make a video of it. You can either act it out or record it, using images from the Internet (film adaptations, paintings, real photos, etc.) as a backdrop for your audio recording.

Death penalty and racial disparity

This Is My America (2020) by Kim Johnson

Group 1: I loved both, didn’t I? But I loved him the most… Imagine you are Daisy, Gatsby’s lover. You have reluctantly agreed to talk about your affair with Gatsby with a journalist, provided you can stay anonymous. You open your heart and reveal your feelings for Gatsby, and also explain why you decided to stay with your husband Tom though you know that he has betrayed you many times. Write the imaginary interview with Daisy, and make a video.

17-year-old Tracy Beaumont is a black American girl whose innocent father has been on death row for seven years and has now only nine months to live before execution. Every week, she writes letters to an organisation called Innocence X to help save him, until a crime is committed in their Texas town and Tracy‘s brother is the main suspect.

Kim Johnson has been involved in social justice since her teenage years. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Maryland and is now an award-winning novelist. This Is My America is her thoughtprovoking debut novel exploring racism in the American justice system.

Group 2: You love me, don’t you? I won’t lose you. Imagine you are Gatsby moments before you are assassinated. You are in the swimming pool and thinking of Daisy, the only woman that you have ever loved. You can’t believe that she has ever loved Tom, her husband. You want to call her on the phone in the morning and tell her once again what you feel for her. Write the impossible conversation between Gatsby and Daisy, and make a video.

“

I finished reading this gripping novel in less than 10 hours. What makes it much more interesting than other YA stories is that it isn’t just about what is happening today with the Black Lives Matter movement, but it also deals with how unfair incarceration affects and often destroys families. It was very, very good, but also quite difficult to read at times.

Group 3: I loved my son, I did… but I lost him. Imagine you are Henry C. Gatz, Gatsby’s father. You read the article about his death in a newspaper in Chicago and from the description and picture you understand that this millionaire may be your beloved son, Jay Gatz, from whom you haven’t heard since he left your modest home when he was 16. You are shocked and write a telegram to Nick Carraway to announce your arrival after asking a friend to take care of your house and dog in your absence. Write your imaginary conversation with your friend, who knows how much you cared for your son and how his disappearance broke your heart, and make a video.

AI ACTIVITY

Your text explained

#BookTok

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Mr Gatsby seems to have had no family connections, but given his fortune it is expected that a relative will soon turn up to claim the inheritance, which appears to be quite remarkable, though the victim was often rumoured to have accumulated a great fortune in recent times by illegal means. The funeral service will be held as soon as the police authorise it, and Mr Carraway, the only person close to the victim at the moment, has announced that the funeral service will be leaving from Gatsby’s house to reach the local cemetery. He has invited any and all family members and relatives to contact him by telegram or any other means available so that they may help to arrange the funeral and take care of Mr Gatsby’s inheritance.

INTERPRET 4 Geordie will be executed for stealing royal deer. Is the crime in proportion to the punishment, in your opinion?

1 Would you describe the woman as passive or determined? Why?

The body of Mr George Wilson, who most likely shot himself to death, was also found next to Gatsby’s. The circumstances of the alleged murder and suicide are being investigated, but the police believe that Mr Wilson may have sneaked into Gatsby’s property to revenge the death of his wife, Mrs Myrtle Wilson. The woman died in a car accident caused by her own erratic behaviour; she seems to have gotten out of her apartment in a state of confusion only to run out in front of a car. Mr Gatsby admitted being at the wheel, and took full responsibility for the tragic event, though it had been rumoured that a woman was driving the car involved in the tragic accident. Mr Daisy Buchanan, who is rumoured to have been Mr Gatsby’s lover recently and also in the past, has left New York City with her husband Tom without making any statement. Mr Carraway, who happens to be Daisy’s cousin, has no idea of her whereabouts, though he said that he hopes to see her soon.

414

“

The prison industry is a $182 billion sector that feeds off the lives of Black, brown, and poor people caught up in its vicious cycle. While mass incarceration is a complex problem, I wanted to simply (ha ha) focus on how it’s almost impossible to prove someone is innocent without adequate representation.

Ask an AI software to be one of the three characters above, the one you have chosen for your interview. Role-play the interview with your AI assistant, and take note of its answers. Don‘t forget to ask it to speak in the first person. Prepare a report for the class.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Caleb’s review of the book and discuss the following points, saying if you agree or disagree: • The death penalty is just vengeance disguised as justice. • People should only be jailed if they commit serious crimes like murder or rape. WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with the ballad Geordie.

415

The Modern Age

L’ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICA L’offerta didattica di Voices è multifunzionale e altamente inclusiva. • In action: attività per un coinvolgimento attivo su lingua, contenuti e temi presenti in pagina. • Check out: esercizi di comprensione a risposta chiusa, aperta e con alcuni esempi sul modello delle certificazioni FIRST, IELTS e della prova INVALSI. • Web quest: una personale ricerca online per approfondire autori, opere o temi. • Thinking routine: attività di analisi e riflessione su immagini a confronto. • Debate: la classe, divisa in due gruppi, si confronta e dibatte su un tema portante attraverso pro e contro. • Mediation: attività di passaggio da una lingua/cultura ad un‘altra. • Project: organizzazione e realizzazione di un progetto su un tema proposto. • Survey making: organizzazione e realizzazione di una indagine conoscitiva. Particolare attenzione è posta all’attività didattica relativa ai brani antologici: • Step in: attività che prevede un video di Emotional learning per un’introduzione emozionale al brano, seguita da un esercizio di pre-comprensione. • Understand: capire quanto viene detto nel brano. • Analyse: analizzare personaggi, temi e caratteristiche stilistiche del brano. • Interpret: interpretare personalmente il brano, anche con attività di discuss, debate e work creative.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Pre-Romanticisim PPT

The Romantic Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

Thomas Gray DT18 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Pre-Romanticism

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

A European movement at its beginning

The Scottish heritage • Robert Burns DT19 Auld Lang Syne DT20 A Red, Red Rose • Sir Walter Scott, Waverley DT21 The Highlander

Romanticism was a European movement in literature and the other arts; it was particularly powerful in Britain, Germany and France. It rediscovered imagination, the beauty and strangeness in nature, and all the impulses of the mind and senses, in reaction to the neoclassical standards of order, harmony, proportion of the Augustan Age ( p. 132). English writers and other intellectuals were influenced by the German Sturm und Drang, a Romantic movement which was associated with nationalism and the search for national identity. In France, Madame de Staël (1766–1817) promoted Romanticism with her De L’Allemagne, published in 1813. In Italy, the first work to advocate the advent of Romanticism was Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo al suo figliuolo, published in 1816 by Giovanni Berchet (1783–1851); rising nationalism, which was liberal and democratic in origin, associated itself with the new movement, as shown in the works of Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni.

• Edmund Burke (1729–97) redefined aesthetics with his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). The ‘Beautiful’ is associated with smallness, smoothness, delicacy, proportion and balance, and it comforts men. The ‘Sublime’, instead, is vast, infinite, and magnificent, and it causes awe, a unique mix of attraction and fear, pleasure and terror ( p. 168). Both the Gothic novel and poems about the supernatural by Samuel T. Coleridge ( p. 198) are examples of the sublime.

IN ACTION

New trends in poetry

IN ACTION

Key words

During the second half of the 18th century, new forms of literature and philosophical thought introduced a new sensibility. Poets favoured intimate, subjective and intuitive materials, and nature was presented as an emotional reality. Both realistic and bourgeois novels were abandoned in favour of Gothicism.

2 Choose the correct alternative.

1 Which past meaning of the word ‘romantic’ is identical to the modern one(s)? Choose from among the following. a

Anything extravagant and unreal (18th century)

A sentimental and often melancholy state of mind (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Poetic, magic, obscure for man’s spiritual activity (German writers)

A new sensibility towards natural things and man’s nature (English poets)

▶ Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Dream of Ossian (1813)

• Graveyard poetry consisted of philosophical meditations upon death and bereavement. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray (1716–71) celebrated the graves of humble and unknown villagers. Dei Sepolcri, the poem published by the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo in 1806, praised the tombs’ power to inspire virtue in future generations. The melancholic tone of the poems in the UK focusing on the theme of mortality anticipated the taste for the macabre of the Gothic novel ( p. 182). • The taste for primitive poetry, in the form of old popular productions from a remote past, grew with the publication of the Ossianic poems. The Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736–96) published them in 1765 with the title The Works of Ossian, a blind Scottish warrior-poet. The poems had actually been written by Macpherson, on the basis of genuine Gaelic ballads and in imitation of primary epics. The poems were very popular and influential all over Europe; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the early representatives of Romanticism in Germany with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), was one of their many admirers, and even translated part of the work into German.

English in action

1 to affect = influenzare / affezionarsi 2 to promote a student / an idea 3 to advocate = promuovere / difendere 4 to favour = preferire / favorire 5 to inspire = espirare / ispirare

• For Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), the Genevan philosopher and writer, man has an innate good nature. In Emile, or On Education (1762), an educational treatise written in the form of a Bildungsroman, he discussed how the individual, ‘the good savage’, can maintain his innate human goodness in a corrupting collectivity; he believed the original ‘man’ was free from sin, and that those deemed ‘savages’ were not brutal, but noble. In the epistolary novel Julie; or, The New Heloise (1761), he exalted the passion of Saint-Preux, Rousseau’s projection of himself, and his woman, Julie. He claimed that for people to be really authentic individuals their feelings and passions should always prevail even over rational moral principles. Lastly, Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762 p. 131), argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate and for the right of the people to govern themselves. • A distinctive voice was represented by the philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97 p. 176). She criticised Rousseau’s view of the innate goodness of man and above all vindicated the right to equality for women in education. She was critical of the French Revolution; it advocated equality for all people, but it did not grant women free public education, one of the fundamental rights for a person’s growth. MIND MAP

European movement

new sensibility

Pre-Romanticism

philosophical contributions

primitive poetry and national folklore

Graveyard poetry

German Sturm und Drang

immagination and impulses

Edmund Burke sublime vs beatiful

mortality and melancholy

Ossianic poems

Madame de Staël

nature as emotional reality

Jean-Jacques Rousseau good savage and social contract

Thomas Gray and Ugo Foscolo

Scottish ballads and folk songs

• One more contribution to the rediscovery Giovanni Berchet Gothicism of national folklore came from Thomas Mary Wollstonecraft Percy (1729–1811) and his Reliques of women’s rights Ancient English Poetry (1765), a collection of ballads and popular songs. CHECK OUT Other collections followed, for example Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish 1 Answer the questions. Border (1802). Percy’s work was also a 1 What is Romanticism? Include a definition, areas of development and relationship to past tradition. source of inspiration for Lyrical Ballads 2 What Romantic writers/movements can you name outside Britain? (1798 p. 193), the collection of poems 3 Write a few notes about the new trends in poetry and philosophy. Include authors with their works. by William Wordsworth T. the 20th century, during the•‘age From 1851 toand theSamuel middle of of progress‘ Expos poetry were the most Graveyard poetry, the • Primitive • Rediscovery of national folklore • Beautiful vs Sublime • The good savage • Defence of women’s rights Coleridge that began event Romantic poetry. important of cultural exchange. The earlier Expos were influenced by colonial ambition and by the progress of the Industrial Revolution. Material progress based on technological innovation was Ideas for your map: THE GOOD SAVAGE p. 247 175 at the heart of the exhibitions, a reflection of Positivism. After the First and the Second World Wars, technology started being seen instead as potentially destructive. Recent Expositions, such as the 2021 Dubai Expo and the 2025 Tokyo Expo, have shown interest and concern for sustainability.

THE ARTS

174

The world expositions, the showcase of a nation’s identity

The Romantic Age – Pre-Romanticism

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis

The Eiffel Tower (1889) by Gustave Eiffel (engineer) – Paris

Crystal Palace (1851) by Sir Joseph Paxton (architect) – London

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World Exhibition. Like the Palais des Beaux-arts et des Arts Libéraux and the Galerie des Industries Diverses it was a metal construction whose bold structure expressed the faith in the era of technical progress. To erect a tower 1,000 feet (300 m) high, Gustave Eiffel and his engineers chose iron as the building material. Some artists and men of letters protested against what they considered a monstrosity built in the heart of the city of Paris, but visitors and Parisians soon started loving this iconic landmark. Eiffel defended his work, claiming that as an engineer he was concerned not only with solidity, but also with elegance and beauty, and compared his tower to the pyramids of Egypt, which are ‘after all only artificial mounds of dirt, to assert the quite ordinary yet exceptional nature of its construction, a symbol of strength and overcoming adversity.‘

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Organised by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, and other members of the Royal Society of Arts, the Great Exhibition of 1851 exhibited achievements from countries worldwide and Percy Bysshe Shelley highlighted Britain’s superiority in the modern world through technological advancements. The THINKING ROUTINE symbol of the First Expo was the Crystal Palace, an innovative structure made of cast-iron and plate 1 The Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower caused wonder and admiration, the former with its immense internal spaces and the glass that provided 990,000 square feet of exhibition space. In the design of the Crystal Palace, natural light that entered through the glass, the latter with its height and slender structure. Do you still find them impressive? As thus with thee in prayer in my sore5 need. Sir Joseph Paxton, also a botanist, employed timber, iron and glass in a ridge-and-furrow10 system 2 How great is the poet’s need As Shelley himself wrote, the inspiration for this poem came from a storm he saw in a ‘wood that of freedom? he had developed for greenhouses at Chatsworth in 1837. The Crystal Palace contained important Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a Web cloud! quest skirts the Arno, near Florence‘. The poem takes up the themes of political change, revolution and innovations in mass production of standardised materials and rapid assembly of parts, but itsI chief 6 7 of life! I bleed ! fall upon the thorns 2 Search the web and find out what happened to the Crystal Palace and to the Eiffel Tower. the role of the poet, like his other poems written at the same time, such as Prometheus architectural merit lay in its balanced organisation of colossal spaces. Unbound, and England in 1819. Ode to the West Wind is written as a sequence of five sonnets, A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d8 each presented as a self-contained stanza, but the rhyme scheme follows Dante’s terza rima Ideas for your map: PROGRESS p. 331 Victorian Age addresses the Wind and calls it 252 5TheThe 253 except for the final rhyming-pair couplet. poet passionately One too like thee: tameless9, and swift, and proud. ‘Spirit‘, ‘Destroyer and Preserver‘, spreading death and giving life in the cycle of the seasons while its actions touch the three realms of nature, the Earth, the sky and the waters. After evoking the Wild West Wind and its actions, the poet asks the Wind to make him its ‘lyre‘ and the instrument V of a prophecy of regeneration which is presented in vivid symbolic imagery. The poem allegorises 15 Make me thy lyre10, even as the forest is: the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution.

Ode to the West Wind (1820)

What if11 my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full poem • Visual analysis • Translation

T33 Oh, if I were like you, Spirit! 39 Ode to the West Wind

STEP IN

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

instrument • free • misses • winter • weight • natural The poet wishes that he were one of the (1) all over the world. He (2)

elements that the West Wind so easily carries

the time of his boyhood, when he felt he could be faster than

the wind; now he feels the (3)

of time that has passed, and that he is no longer as

(4)

and fierce as the wind is. He asks the wind to make him its ‘lyre’ – its

(5)

, and spread his thoughts all over the world to start a new beginning, which is as

inevitable as the spring that arrives after (6) Now read the extract and check your answers.

1 What does the poet wish he were? Why?

ANALYSE

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision3; I would ne’er have striven4

1 mightest: might 2 pant: che palpiti

212

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

3 to outstrip... vision: superare la tua celeste velocità non pareva un sogno

5 sore: estremo 6 thorns: spine 7 I bleed: sanguino 8 chain’d... bow’d: incatenato e piegato 9 tameless: indomito 10 lyre: lira, il simbolo della poesia 11 What if: Cosa importa se

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be

4 What prophecy will the poet give?

12 wither’d: appassite 13 quicken: affrettare 14 Scatter... sparks: spargi, come cenere e lapilli da un focolare inestinguibile 15 unawaken’d: dormiente 16 trumpet: tromba

INTERPRET

3 Answer the questions.

4 Discuss

1 Which words are used to describe the wind?

The ode can be interpreted as a hymn to the power of nature, or as a prophecy of political and social revolution, under the veil of a naturalistic description. Which view is most convincing in your opinion? Why?

2 How different is the condition of the poet in the past and now? 3 Is the wind a physical reality, or a symbol, or both? Give reasons for your answer. 4 striven: lottato

3 What is autumn like?

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks14, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d15 earth The trumpet16 of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest1 bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant2 beneath thy power, and share

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d12 leaves to quicken13 a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

4 Find a few examples of metaphors and similes. How important is the figurative language to the development of the poet’s message? 5 Check the rhyme scheme; is it regular? What scheme is used? PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

213

Voices • Contenuti digitali integrativi COMPACT

Voices Compact offre un ricco apparato digitale per consolidare e ampliare l’apprendimento e potenziare la competenza digitale.

VIDEOPRESENTAZIONI Video introduttivi in apertura di capitolo, contesto e per ogni autrice e autore con attività di Flipped classroom.

POWERPOINT

PPT

Lezioni in PowerPoint che identificano gli aspetti fondamentali di avvenimenti e personaggi del periodo.

ANALISI VISUALI

PDF

Per tutti i testi antologizzati sono disponibili analisi per un apprendimento visuale.

ANALISI INTERATTIVE • Di un’ampia selezione di brani antologici.

• Di un’ampia selezione di opere artistiche.

The Elizabethan/Shakespearean scheme consisted of three quatrains and a final couplet rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and measured in iambic pentameters.

MAPPE INTERATTIVE

The main practitioners of the Elizabethan sonnet sequence were Edmund Spenser (1552–99), Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86) and William Shakespeare (1564–1616) ( p. 124). Probably composed in the 1580s, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella was a sonnet sequence presenting his love for Stella; it was followed by Spenser’s Amoretti (1595), dedicated to his own wife. The collections reflect Beowulf the Petrarchan ideal of an angelic woman to be adored while Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which were ▲ Peter Lely, Portrait of a Lady published innovations prendere significant una via tortuosa e ritrovare in themes and codified the sotake a roundabout road and fleefor the first time in 1609, brought (said to be to Lady Diana Sidney, called Shakespearean sonnet. Spenser’s wife). il suo covo nelle paludi. La stretta delle sue dita 30

to his liar in the fens. The latching power in his fingers weakened; it was the worst trip MIND the terror-monger had taken to MAP Heorot.

andava indebolendosi; fu il viaggio peggiore che quel terrore di tutti avesse fatto a Heorot.

The English Renaissance

(Modern English version by Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, 1999)

Tutte le Mind map sono modificabili e espandibili per favorire una didattica realmente inclusiva.

UNDERSTAND New 2 Answer the questions. Learning

Renaissance Humanism

Renaissance

1 Who is ‘Hygelac’s kinsman’?

flourishing

2 Who strikes first, or Grendel? of literature andBeowulf art 3 Who does the monster attack first? 4 Who is ‘the captain of evil’?

classical culture

translations of literature and art

Mynte se mæra, translations – imitations – John þær Lyly’she meahte swa, widreEuphues: gewindanthe ond on weg þanon collections Anatomy fleon on fen-hopu; of Witwiste his fingra geweald on grames grapum; þæt wæs geocor sið Sir Thomas Wyatt – þæt se hearm-scaþa to Heorute ateah.Henry Howard Earl of Surrey –

Erasmus von

Rotterdam 5 Who is stronger and will win, Beowulf or Grendel? 6 What is Grendel’s desperate wish? ANALYSE

Michel de Montaigne

William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible

3 Answer the questions. 1 What expressions and adjectives are used to describe Beowulf and Grendel, and what do they highlight about each character?

– William Shakespeare

Work creative 5 5 ‘Euphuism’ in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit is characterised by The passage presents reactions and thoughts simple diction and a more searchofforGrendel’s clarity and economy.

3 Grendel is astonished and taken aback by Beowulf’s physical

1 Choose all the Underline correct statements. superiority. the words that reflect the monster’s awareness

Edmund Spenser – Philip Sidney (From Beowulf)

INTERPRET

2 How violent is Grendel’s first attack? CHECK OUT

Poetry –

Prose

the sonnet in 2 Alliteration is a key element of the poem Beowulf Old English, as you can hear in the Old English version of Sir Thomas Petrarchan/ ll. 27–31. How often is it used in the version in Modern English Utopia Shakespearean sonnet by SeamusMore’s Heaney, and why?

than of Beowulf’s. Rewrite the episode in about 80 words so

6 The Renaissance was delayed in England because the Anglican The Renaissance and the English Renaissance developed of European his weakness. that Beowulf’s reactions and thoughts are dominant. Which Reformation contact with opinion? any Catholic country quite difficult simultaneously. 4 Beowulf and Grendel stand for the forces of good and evil respectively. The version is moremade dramatic in your and at times almost impossible. monster fears warrior and his own end; was whatthe mayfirst this European suggest? After the fall ofthe Constantinople, England country to be involved in Humanism.

PDF sonnet Your text explained Digital resources, Booster The Petrarchan was introduced by Sir ThomasStudy Wyatt after 1527.

The most important Humanists were Erasmus von Rotterdam, Sir Thomas More, and Michel de Montaigne.

In Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the woman always returns the man’s love, though in secret.

9 The Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was published in Latin in 1516 and never Discover top trending book with various forms of alternate rhyme plus a final rhyming couplet. translated into English. recommendations

#BookTok

VIDEO DI BOOKTOK

Shield Maiden (2023) by Sharon Emmerichs

Suggerimenti di lettura fatti da e rivolti a young adults.

Born in Sweden to American parents, Sharon Emmerichs teaches early British literature and Shakespeare at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research areas include feminist theory and eco-critical studies. Shield Maiden is her debut novel.

Can women be great warriors?

Ideas for your map: LOVE

p. 203

107

Fryda has grown up listening to her uncle King Beowulf’s adventurous stories and is keen to follow in his footsteps. Despite the terrible accident that permanently damaged her hand when she was 13, she’s ready to do whatever it takes to make her dream come true.

“

I’ve had a hard time finding interesting YA novels recently. I was fed up with the boring plots and dumb characters in most of them, so Emmerichs’ new book was a welcome relief! Shield Maiden definitely stands out from what is currently on the market and I‘m sure fans of YA fantasy romance will enjoy it as a way to learn about the legend of Beowulf from a different POV.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Amanda’s review of the book. Discuss the following points:

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with the epic poem Beowulf.

• Can women be as strong as men? • Is physical strength the most important feature of a hero? • What makes the legend of Beowulf interesting or boring for a YA reader?

MATERIALI EXTRA

PDF

oices offre numerosi documenti di approfondimento V su temi, personaggi, autrici e autori, opere. Il canone letterario si arricchisce di nuovi contributi ampliando l’offerta autoriale e antologica.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

The Augustan Age (1714–1776)

LEARNING DIGITAL • The Augustan Age • “The Tatler” and “The Spectator” PPT PDF PDF

The Augustan Age: Literature and Culture The Ancients vs the Moderns Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock DT12 Belinda’s toilet DT13 The mortal offence

The term ‘Augustan Age’ comes from the imitation of the original Augustan writers of Latin literature, seen as examples of perfect style. Literature was affected by the new spirit of the time, with reason, self-control and balance as ideals towards the perfectly rational man and society of the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that revolutionised art, philosophy, and politics. The method of reason was applied to religion itself in Deism, which believes in the existence of one God on the basis of reason and evidence. Deists saw God as a sort of architect who administered rewards and punishments, and they believed in the need for humans to be virtuous and pious. The two dominant genres of the age were satire and the realistic novel.

Literary models

PER L’INCLUSIONE

• The Classics

▲ Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche (1793).

It is regarded as a masterpiece of Neoclassical sculpture.

The Latin authors Virgil, Horace and Ovid were studied and imitated. Cato and his noble suicide, became a cult object as he represented the highest ideals of stoicism. The emperor Augustus was viewed as an ideal ruler, at the head of a powerful empire that the English were replicating in their own colonial expansion ( p. 104); Augustus and his friend Maecenas, an important patron for Augustan poets, became the model for literary patronage.

•U n’ampia selezione di esercizi a risposta chiusa sono resi interattivi con autocorrezione per l’autovalutazione e l’apprendimento. •T utti i testi antologici e i commenti negli Study Booster sono registrati.

• The French The France of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the Sun King, and Louis XV (1715–74) offered the model of Neoclassicism of Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), of the works of the philosophers Voltaire (1694– 1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755), who helped to spread the ideas of tolerance, democracy and anti-slavery, and of the contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–80). The Encyclopédie of Sciences, Arts and Trades was a showcase for the Enlightenment and its ideas; it was the result of the effort of several contributors under the direction of Denis Diderot (1713–84).

Audience and style Most readers were from the middle classes and they appreciated clear and precise language. The spread of journals and circulating libraries helped to increase the number of potential readers among the urban middle classes. Neoclassical theories, with their focus on “clarity, precision, order, harmony and universality”, also affected language, which became refined and elegant, clear and precise, in order to meet the requirements of commerce and science. The female reading public also increased since women of the upper classes had leisure time to read and were also admitted to the public coffee houses ( p. 213). They joined the debates concerning the issues of the time: their demand for education and information grew.

PER L‘APPROFONDIMENTO PDF

Non-fiction prose The growing importance of the middle classes and their need to be informed gave rise to

journalism and essay writing. Study Booster : uno strumento digitale utile per l’approfondimento della competenza letteraria, con i commenti dettagliati di • Journalism The first half of the 18 century was the ‘Golden Age of British Journalism’ with the rise and spread tutti i testi antologici (Your text explained). of the first periodicals and newspapers. The abolition of censorship in 1695 greatly contributed to the diffusion of newspapers. The two most dell’Esame important periodicals of the were “The Tatler” Sono presenti inoltre una trattazione cronologica dei generi letterari (Genres in time) e la Seconda prova ditimeStato; and “The Spectator”, published by Richard Steele (1672–1729) and Joseph Addison (1672–1719). sono proposti infine testi e attività utili per l’Orientamento. th

220

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – The Augustan Age (1714–1776)

Contents

FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE MIDDLE AGES 6 century–1485 th

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts Migrations and invasions

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

We all love a good fight!

• Doggerland • Stonehenge • The Celts • The Norman Conquest • The feudal system • Magna Carta PPT • The Origins: History and Society

PDF • Royal dynasties: The Normans • The Plantagenets

PDF Rights of today

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Steps to civil rights

LEARNING DIGITAL

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

Britain‘s first women warriors

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Invasion and conquest

• The Middle Ages: History and Society • StoryTelling: My father, King Alfred the Great

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Anglo-Saxon literature

• Anglo-Saxon prose • Anglo-Saxon poetry PPT The Origins: Literature and Culture

AUTHORS AND WORKS Beowulf

T1 The fight with Grendel

PDF • Full plot • Beowulf: a long-lasting hero • Beowulf,

epic or elegiac? • Across time and space: Heroes and anti-heroes • They would kill me • The wanderer Interactive analysis PDF Visual analysis

#BookTok

Can women be great warriors? Shield Maiden by Sharon Emmerichs

Beowulf

PPT Beowulf

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Medieval literature Poetry

32 32

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

An anchoress and a woman writer

• Medieval literature • Romances • Ballads PPT The Middle Ages: Literature and Culture PDF • The Cuckoo Song • Films for thought: Knights

and ladies, what a passion! • Rights for all: Poverty, the greatest evil of all times • Across time and space: Are pilgrimages and crusades here to stay? • Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur DT1 The sword in the stone Medieval drama

T2 Lord Randal

Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

StoryTelling The strange case of Lord Randal

T3 Geordie

THE ARTS

The rich arts of the Middle Ages

Medieval drama

AUTHORS AND WORKS

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

#BookTok Death penalty and racial disparity This Is My America by Kim Johnson

Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales

46 48

PPT Geoffrey Chaucer

T4 General Prologue

PDF • DT2 The Knight • DT3 The Doctor of Medicine

T5 The Wife of Bath

PDF Visual analysis

Interactive analysis

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Why Chaucer’s tales now?

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP 8

Geoffrey Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales

54 55

Map store

PDF Visual analysis

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE 1485–1660

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts

THE IDEA OF THE TIME The power of illusion LEARNING DIGITAL

The Tudors and the first Stuarts

• Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy • Elizabeth I’s reign • Defeat of the Spanish Armada • James I’s Bible • The Pilgrim Fathers • Execution of Charles I during the Civil War

THE ARTS

Portraits of power from past to present

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

PDF History narrated: The Tudors and the first Stuarts

The English Renaissance Renaissance drama The Jacobean and Puritan Age

62 64 68

AUTHORS AND WORKS

History and Society PDF Royal dynasties • The Tudors • The Stuarts

• The English Renaissance • The sonnet PPT The Renaissance and the Puritan Age: Literature

and Culture

Christopher Marlowe Doctor Faustus

T6 Faustus’ last hour

#BookTok

PPT The Renaissance and the Puritan Age:

PDF • The courtier

• Edmund Spenser DT4 Ye tradeful Merchants Renaissance drama The Jacobean and Puritan Age Christopher Marlowe and Doctor Faustus

Marlowe and Goethe’s myth in the 21st century Another Faust by Daniel & Dina Nayeri

PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

William Shakespeare Shakespeare’s Sonnets

76 78

PPT William Shakespeare

T7 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? T8 That time of year thou mayst in me behold T9 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

PDF DT5 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Shakespeare’s plays

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

PDF Julius Caesar DT6 Brutus’ speech

William Shakespeare and the Globe Shakespeare’s Sonnets

• Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation Shakespeare’s plays PPT Shakespeare’s plays

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

In love with Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet

T10 The balcony scene

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

PDF • Full plot • DT8 The magic juice

T11 Doting for an ass

PDF Visual analysis

PDF • Full plot • DT7 Goodbye, my lord PDF Visual analysis

Interactive analysis

THE ARTS

Shakespearean women fall in love

The Merchant of Venice

T12 Am I not human?

100

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

101

T13 Hamlet, the man of inaction T14 Oh fair Ophelia! Oh wicked mother!

104 105

The heroine and the model

108 110

T15 I have done the deed

111

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Shakespeare’s women claim their independence

PDF • Full plot • The three pigs and the three avengers

• Hamlet in the bush • The hero and the foil • DT9 Remember me Interactive analysis PDF Visual analysis

StoryTelling Ophelia and I

Macbeth

PDF Full plot PDF • Visual analysis PDF • Visual analysis

PDF Visual analysis PDF • Full plot • Witchcraft and King James

• DT10 The dagger scene Interactive analysis PDF Visual analysis

114

John Donne

116

T16 The Sun Rising

118

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

120

Interactive analysis

121

Map store

J ohn Donne and Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets PDF DT11 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE 1660–1776

122

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts The Restoration and the Augustan Age

LEARNING DIGITAL 124

RIGHTS FOR ALL

The English Bill of Rights (1689)

126

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Scotland and England, a long and difficult marriage

StoryTelling A glimpse of 17th–century London

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Social life

127 128

• The Restoration • The Glorious Revolution • The Bill of Rights • The Jacobite rebellions • The War of the Spanish Succession • The War of the Austrian Succession • The Seven Years’ War • The Act of Union PPT The Restoration and the Augustan Age: History and Society PDF Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians

The Restoration Age

LITERATURE AND CULTURE The Restoration Age The Augustan Age The novel

PPT The Restoration and the Augustan Age: Literature and

130 132 136

THE ARTS

Living in mansions but enjoying nature

138

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Do we care about our cities?

T17 Proposals for a sustainable development T18 After the hurricane

from The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell

• The Augustan Age • ‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator’ PDF • The Ancients vs the Moderns

• Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock DT12 Belinda’s toilet DT13 The mortal offence The novel

from Fumifugium by John Evelyn

Culture

PDF • Samuel Richardson, Clarissa

140

DT14 Clarissa’s death • Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy DT15 Tristram’s breeches

141

AUTHORS AND WORKS William Congreve The Way of the World

142 142

PDF The Way of the World: full plot

T19 Provisos

144

PDF Visual analysis

#BookTok

William Congreve and The Way of the World

Lost – and found – in the mail To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

146

THE ARTS

Marriage, the affair of a lifetime

147

Aphra Behn Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave

148 148

PDF • Full plot • Slave trade through the centuries

T20 We are men, not brutes and not slaves

148

PDF Visual analysis

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe

150 152

PPT Daniel Defoe

T21 Are cannibals like us? T22 Friday, the ideal ‘savage’

153

PDF A Journal of the Plague Year

154

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

A man for all worlds

156

Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels

158

T23 Slaves of perfect reason

162

160

Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe

DT16 Shutting people in their homes PDF • Full plot • Robinson Crusoe, the economic man PDF Visual analysis

Interactive analysis

164

T24 A cockroach rules the country

PPT Jonathan Swift

PDF • Full plot • Gulliver’s travels DT17 Yahoos and

Houyhnhnms PDF Visual analysis

Interactive analysis

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

PDF V isual analysis

Jonathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels PDF Swift, politics and satire

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Satire will never die

Aphra Behn and Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave

166 167

Map store

PDF V isual analysis

THE ROMANTIC AGE 1776–1837

168

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts

LEARNING DIGITAL

The age of revolutions

170

RIGHTS FOR ALL

A house for all

172

The American Revolution • The French Revolution • The First Industrial Revolution PPT The Romantic Age: History and Society PDF History narrated: The age of revolutions

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

Mother Pandora and the myth of the good savage

173

Pre-Romanticisim PPT The Romantic Age: Literature and Culture

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

PDF • Thomas Gray DT18 Elegy Written in a

Pre-Romanticism

174

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

A new world for women

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Nature: love it, or fear it?

T25 Education for women makes for a better society

Country Churchyard • Robert Burns DT19 Auld Lang Syne DT20 A Red, Red Rose • Sir Walter Scott, Waverly DT21 The Highlander The Romantic movement

from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

176

PDF The good and brutal savage

The Romantic movement Romantic poetry Romantic fiction

178 180 182

PDF Romantic poets redefine poetry

William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience

184

T26 The Lamb T27 The Tyger T28 London

187

185 188 189

THE ARTS

190

William Wordsworth

192

T29 I wandered lonely as a cloud T30 Composed upon Westminster Bridge

195 196

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The art of contemplation

197

Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

198

T31 The killing of the Albatross

202

200

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The Albatross myth

205

George Gordon Byron Oriental Tales – Lara

206

T32 The Byronic hero

208

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind

210

T33 Oh, if I were like you, Spirit!

212

John Keats

214

T34 Ode on a Grecian Urn

216

208

212

THE ARTS

Eternity and time

Romantic fiction PDF Social conventions in the early 19th century

AUTHORS AND WORKS

Does science make wonders?

Romantic poetry

219

Ann Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho

220

T35 A love of nature T36 A Gothic world is born

222

220 223

William Blake and Songs of Innocence and of Experience PDF • DT22 The Blossom • DT23 The Sick Rose PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Interactive analysis

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

William Wordsworth and Lyrical Ballads PPT William Wordsworth PDF DT24 The new poetry DT25 My heart leaps up

DT26 Tintern Abbey Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Samuel T. Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner PPT Samuel T. Coleridge PDF • Full plot • The mystery of a sea story

• The Rime, a Reverie Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

George G. Bryon, the Grand Tour and the Byronic hero Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation Percy B. Shelley and Ode to the West Wind PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF Full poem PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

John Keats and Ode on a Grecian Urn PPT John Keats

Interactive analysis

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Ann Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho PDF Full plot PDF V isual analysis PDF V isual analysis

LEARNING DIGITAL

Mary Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

224

T37 The miserable wretch

227

224

ary Shelley and Frankenstein, M or the Modern Prometheus PPT Mary Shelley PDF • Full plot

• DT27 The mystery of life unveiled

#BookTok

PDF Visual analysis

A prequel to Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic 228

This Dark Endeavour by Kenneth Oppel

Interactive analysis

PDF V isual analysis

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Science fiction or sci-fi

229

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

The monster and the author

230

Edgar Allan Poe The Black Cat

232

T38 The final horror

235

234

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

238

T39 Mr and Mrs Bennet, an old couple

241

StoryTelling

244

239

You should have been less cautious, Jane!

E dgar Allan Poe and Tales of Mystery and Imagination PPT Edgar Allan Poe PDF • Poe’s everywhere • Rationality and irrationality

• DT28 The Raven PDF • Full plot • Visual analysis

Interactive analysis

PDF V isual analysis

Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice PDF Sense and Sensibility DT29 How miserable I am! PDF • Full plot • DT30 The difficult art of conversation PDF Visual analysis

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

246 247

THE VICTORIAN AGE (1837–1901)

248

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts An age of contradictions

250 252

254 256

• The scramble for Africa • Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians Literature in the Victorian Age PPT The Victorian Age: Literature and Culture

259

PDF An age of engagement and battle

261

The early Victorian novel

263

The later Victorian novel Victorian poetry

264 264

T40 A Birthday

PPT The Victorian Age: History and Society

257

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Devotional poetry Christina Rossetti

Queen Victoria’s reign • The settlement of the West • The American Civil War and the abolition of slavery PDF • History narrated: An age of contradictions

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Literature that reflects society The Victorian novel The early Victorian novel The later Victorian novel Victorian poetry Victorian drama

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Poverty vs wealth LEARNING DIGITAL

THE ARTS

The world expositions, the showcase of a nation’s identity

Map store

PDF Robert Browning DT31 My Last Duchess

Victorian drama

THE ARTS

The women of the Pre-Raphaelites

265

AUTHORS AND WORKS Charles Dickens

266

PPT Charles Dickens

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Childhood denied

Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist

269

PDF The workhouse system

The Adventures of Oliver Twist

270

PDF • Full plot

T41 Oliver starved to death

272

• DT32 Oliver becomes a thief • DT33 Jacob’s island • DT34 Sad and happy memories

StoryTelling

274

Interactive analysis

No more workhouses!

PDF Visual analysis

LEARNING DIGITAL

Hard Times

276

T42 Coketown

277

PDF • Full plot • DT35 Facts, and no fancy PDF V isual analysis

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The nature/nurture debate

279

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

A Dickens for all times

280

Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre

282 282

PPT The Brontë sisters

T43 I am a free being

284

PDF F ull plot

Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights

286

T44 I am Heathcliff

289

#BookTok

Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights

286

PPT The Brontë sisters

Interactive analysis

A fiercely romantic tale of betrayal and vengeance

PDF The real Brontë sisters

PDF Full plot PDF Visual analysis

290

Black Spring by Alison Croggon

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Emily’s unique gift

291

George Eliot Middlemarch

292 292

PDF U nconventional George Eliot

T45Disillusionment

294

PDF F ull plot

Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

296

T46 I was him, all the time

299

296

George Eliot and Middlemarch

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

obert Louis Stevenson and The Strange R Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde PPT Robert Louis Stevenson PDF • Full plot • DT36 Why do I loathe Hyde so much?

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The detective story

301

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

302 304

PPT Oscar Wilde

T47 The horror revealed

306

PDF The Happy Prince and Other Tales

The Importance of Being Earnest

308

T48 What’s in a name?

309

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray

DT37 The Nightingale and the Rose PDF F ull plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

PDF • Full plot • DT38 Divorces are made in heaven

The sad Happy Prince of art

312

THE USA LITERATURE AND CULTURE

PDF V isual analysis

American literature becomes independent

American literature becomes independent American Renaissance

314

PPT The Victorian Age: Literature and Culture in the USA

314

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

Jo March, the first American fiction(al) writer

317

Herman Melville Moby Dick, or The White Whale

318

T49 The chase: third day

320

318

Herman Melville and Moby Dick PDF • Full plot • DT39 What’s Moby Dick to me?

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass

322 324

PPT Walt Whitman

T50 For You O Democracy

324

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

T51 I Hear America Singing

325

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Emily Dickinson

326

T52 ‘Hope‘ is the thing with feathers

328

E mily Dickinson and Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson PPT Emily Dickinson

T53 Because I could not stop for Death

329

PDF • An eye for flowers • DT40 Me, change! • DT41 I tie my Hat

Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

330 331

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Map store

THE MODERN AGE (1901–1945)

332

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts

LEARNING DIGITAL

An age of wars

334

World War I • World War II PPT The Modern Age: History and Society

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Women’s suffrage in the 20th century

336

RIGHTS FOR ALL

The laws that took rights away

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Experimentation in science and art

PDF • Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians; The House of Windsor

• From Russia to the USSR, from Lenin to Stalin (1917–53) October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday

337

Transitional and Modernist novelists

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Modernism: an age of experimentation Fiction in the Modern Age Stream-of-consciousness fiction

338 338 341

THE ARTS

Ever-changing arts

344

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

The world of the future

346

Poetry in the Modern Age

348

PPT The Modern Age: Literature and Culture PDF • The early 20th century avant-garde movements

• H. James, The Portrait of a Lady DT42 Like an angel beside my bed • D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover DT43 Tevershall The sci-fi heritage • H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds DT44 The coming of the Martians • A. Huxley, Brave New World DT45 The Bokanovsky’s process Stream-of-consciousness fiction Poetry in the Modern Age

AUTHORS AND WORKS Joseph Conrad Heart of Darknes

352 352

PDF No more the Dark Continent

T54 The journey upwards

354

PDF • Full plot • DT46 Mistah Kurtz – he dead

Edward Morgan Forster A Passage to India

356

T55 Can different cultures meet?

358

James Joyce Dubliners Eveline

360

T56 Fear and paralysis

363

The Dead

364

T57 ‘I think he died for me‘

364

Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway

366 368

PPT Virginia Woolf

T58 Out for flowers

370

PDF Full plot

#BookTok

357

361 362

Interactive analysis

PDF V isual analysis

Edward Morgan Forster and A Passage to India PDF Howards End DT47 Beethoven and the goblins PDF F ull plot PDF Visual analysis

James Joyce and Ulysses PPT James Joyce PDF DT48 Eveline (the complete short story) PDF V isual analysis PDF V isual analysis

Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse

PDF Visual analysis

Two women at midlife who rediscover themselves The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon

Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness

371

To the Lighthouse

372

T59 Dinner together

374

PDF • Full plot • DT49 Lily’s vision

Interactive analysis

PDF V isual analysis

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

The women that broke the glass ceiling

376

Katherine Mansfield The Garden Party

378

T60 A dead man, and a fancy hat

380

George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four

382

T61 Two and two make five

385

378

383

K. Mansfield and The Garden Party PDF F ull plot PDF Visual analysis

George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four PDF Down and Out in Paris and London DT50 Poverty

hungers you, but worse than ever, it changes you PDF • Full plot • DT51 Impossible privacy • DT52 Newspeak

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

WAR POETS

388

LEARNING DIGITAL War poets

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Voices in war Soldati by Giuseppe Ungaretti T62 Lament for Syria by Amineh Abou Kerech

389 389 389

PPT War poets

PDF • Shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder

• John McCrae DT53 In Flanders Fields PDF DT54 Anthem for Doomed Youth

Interactive analysis

Wilfred Owen

390

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

T63 Dulce et Decorum Est

390

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Isaac Rosenberg

392

T64 Break of Day in the Trenches

392

Thomas Stearns Eliot The Waste Land

394

T65 Much hated April T66 Unreal city, real Hell

398

396 399

Murder in the Cathedral

400

T67 Living, and partly living

402

Wystan Hugh Auden

404

T68 Refugee Blues

406

Thomas Stearns Eliot and The Waste Land PPT Thomas Stearns Eliot PDF • Vers libre does not exist • Four Quartets

DT55 Present time of eternal salvation PDF • The Waste Land as a spiritual journey

• DT56 If there were water PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

Interactive analysis

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

W.H. Auden and Musées des Beaux Arts PDF DT57 The Unknown Citizen PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

THE USA LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Voices of America

Voices of America Francis Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

408

T69 Gatsby’s funeral

412

StoryTelling

410 411

Love (in all shapes and forms) is better than no love at all

William Faulkner Light in August

PDF • Imagism, the first poetic revolution of the 20th century

• New York, the city of lights and illusions • E.L. Master, Spoon River Anthology DT58 George Gray F.S. Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby PPT F.S. Fitzgerald

414 416

PDF • Full plot • DT59 When love changes

Interactive analysis

419

PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

PDF Visual analysis

William Faulkner and Light in August

416

T70 The outcast Living in a world of prejudices

PPT The Modern Age: History and Culture in the USA

PDF Visual analysis

421

Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls

422 423

PPT E. Hemingway

T71 A soldier’s mission

424

PDF The Snows of Kilimanjaro DT60 The imminence

John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath

426

PDF • Full plot • The Spanish Civil War PDF Visual analysis

T72 A lost Paradise

428

of death

426

The dispossessed in today’s world

T73 Arleen’s homes

from Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Langston Hughes

430 430 432

T74 I, Too, Sing America

434

Langston Hughes and I, Too, Sing America PDF DT61 The Negro Speaks of Rivers PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

RIGHTS FOR ALL

T75 I, Too, Sing América

J. Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath PDF • The Dust Bowl exodus • Route 66, the route of hope? PDF Full plot PDF Visual analysis

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Making sense of one’s identity

E. Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls

435

by Julia Alvarez

435

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

436 437

Map store

THE COLD WAR AGE (1945–1990)

438

LEARNING DIGITAL

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts A divided world

440

StoryTelling NINETEEN SIXTY-EIGHT Confrontation and achievements

442

• The Cold War • The Moon landing • The Fall of the Berlin Wall • The Marshall Plan and the EU • Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister PPT The Cold War Age: History and Society PDF Why did the Berlin Wall fall in 1989?

WOMEN THAT MADE HISTORY

The last glass ceiling finally broken

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Change and fight

444

PDF Royal dynasties: The House of Windsor

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Literature in the UK Literature in the USA Literature in English

• Literature in the UK

446

PPT The Cold War Age: Literature and Culture

449

PDF • A. Carter, The Bloody Chamber DT62 The Werewolf

451

• P. Larkin DT63 Mr Bleaney • T. Hughes DT64 The Thought Fox • H. Pinter, The Caretaker DT65 Friends forever? • Literature in the USA

AUTHORS AND WORKS John Ronald Reuel Tolkien The Lord of the Rings

454

T76 The power of the Ring

457

#BookTok

454

A Japanese-influenced fantasy brimming with adventures and demons A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee

459

Doris Lessing The Grass Is Singing

460

T77 The ‘poor whites’

462

Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot

464

T78 Repeated time, meaningless life

466

460

464

THE ARTS

What is time?

468

something you’d like to be • S. Plath, Ariel Collection DT67 Daddy • A. Sexton DT68 Ringing the Bells • A. Ginsberg DT69 Howl The sci-fi heritage • P.K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? DT70 Human or non-human? • R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 DT71 The Book People • Literature in English PDF • N. Gordimer, July’s People DT72 We are all

prejudiced • K. Das, The Descendants DT73 The White Flowers • V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas DT74 The new house • A. Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades DT75 Flora • P. White, Voss DT76 Voss’ death J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Doris Lessing and The Grass Is Singing PPT Doris Lessing PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Seamus Heaney

470

T79 Digging

472

Jack Kerouac On the Road

474

T80 More, more life

476

Flannery O’Connor The Life You Save May Be Your Own

478 478

PDF Full plot

T81 Leaving an angel behind

480

Alice Walker The Color Purple

482

F lannery O’Connor and The Life You Save May Be Your Own PPT Flannery O’Connor

T82 Celie writes to God

485

Wole Soyinka

486

T83 Telephone Conversation

486

Two planes for two women

Samuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot PPT Samuel Beckett PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

474

482

THE ARTS

PDF • J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye DT66 Name

489

John Maxwell Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians

490

T84 A weak man with a conscience

492

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

494

491

495

PDF Visual analysis

Seamus Heaney and Death of a Naturalist Interactive analysis PDF • Visual analysis • Translation Jack Kerouac and On the Road PPT Jack Kerouac Interactive analysis

PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Alice Walker and The Color Purple PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

W. Soyinka and Telephone Conversation PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

J.M. Coetzee and Waiting for the Barbarians PPT J. M. Coetzee PDF Youth DT77 Loneliness in London PDF Full plot PDF Visual analysis

Map store

THE NEW MILLENNIUM (1990–Today)

496

LEARNING DIGITAL

HISTORY AND SOCIETY • Key Facts An age of crises and wars

• The Twin Towers attack • The 2008 world economic crisis • Brexit • The Covid-19 pandemic • Migration • A new Cold War?

498

LITERATURE AND CULTURE Literature in the New Millennium

THE IDEA OF THE TIME Crisis

PPT The New Millennium: History and Society

500

PDF Royal dynasties: The House of Windsor

THE ARTS

A sculpture that loves the light

503

Literature in the New Millennium PPT The New Millennium: Literature and Culture PDF • Z. Smith, NW DT78 Faces in London • P. Auster,

AUTHORS AND WORKS

The Invention of Solitude DT79 A man hidden inside • J.S. Foer, Everything Is Illuminated DT80 Myself and my family

Ian McEwan Enduring Love

504

T85 Co-operation

506

Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall

508

T86 Life at the Tudor court

510

Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go

512

T87 Donating is your future

514

Toni Morrison Home

516 516

PDF Beloved DT81 Sethe’s memories

T88 They stood like men

518

PDF Full plot PDF Visual analysis

Cormac McCarthy The Road

520 521

PPT Cormac McCarthy

T89 Father and son

523

PDF Blood Meridian DT82 War endures. War is.

504

Don DeLillo Underworld T90 The ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’, a baseball and a nuclear bomb

Interactive analysis

508

512

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Utopian and dystopian novels

Ian McEwan and Enduring Love PPT Ian McEwan PDF F ull plot

525

Hilary Mantel and Wolf Hall PPT Hilary Mantel PDF Full plot

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Kazuo Ishiguro and Never Let Me Go PDF Full plot PDF Visual analysis

Toni Morrison and Home

Cormac McCarthy and The Road

PDF • Full plot • DT83 You have to carry the fire

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

Don DeLillo and Underworld

526 526

PDF Visual analysis

PDF Falling Man DT84 The towers fell. The world changed. PDF Full plot

528

Derek Walcott Omeros

530 530

PDF Sea Grapes DT85 Love After Love

T91 The fight over Helen

532

PDF • Visual analysis • Translation

#BookTok

Derek Walcott and Omeros

Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid’s Tale

A modern version of the Iliad The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

533

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale

534

PPT Margaret Atwood

534

PDF Full plot

T92 A handmaid in red

536

StoryTelling

537

Future thinking

REVISION AREA IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP

Interactive analysis

PDF Visual analysis

538 539

Map store

FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE MIDDLE AGES (6th century–1485) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Invasion and conquest

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Look at the images; how do you think that the people involved in the two historical events were feeling? Choose from among the following: afraid for their lives • excited • proud • scared • tense • in danger • united • strong • weak 2 Answer the questions. The D-Day landing 1 What does the photo show? 2 Which perspective was the photo taken from? 3 The Normans left from Normandy to conquer Britain, and the Allied troops left from Britain to (re)conquer France. Both invasions were legitimate in the eyes of those who led them. Is there a ‘right of conquest’, or is any invasion a form of violation? The Bayeux Tapestry

Interactive analysis

4 What do the wavy lines indicate? 5 Are the human figures outlined according to perspective? 6 The words in Latin mean ‘and [William] came to Pevensey.’ Do they match the scene? Why?/Why not? 7 William’s ship carries a banner, the Pope’s, with a cross inside it and another inside that. What was its aim, in your opinion? Which is which? 3 Conqueror, or conquered? Choose. 1 the Aztec Empire: 2 Alexander the Great: 3 Genghis Khan: 4 the US natives: 5 Julius Caesar:

▲ D-Day landing, 6th June 1944, World War II

Key words

US army troops disembark from their landing craft during the D-Day landing, and approach Normandy’s ‘Omaha’ Beach, France. They have to advance through water while carrying their weapons. The D-Day landing was a strategic moment in the Allied forces’ attempt to reconquer France and free it and then Europe from Nazi occupation.

• invasion = an army entering a country or region for conquest • conquest = taking a country or region by force

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping in texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors Depth-in bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ The Bayeux Tapestry (1073–83) The 70 scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry represent the events leading up to the invasion of Britain by William Duke of Normandy ‘The Conqueror’ in 1066. He claimed that he had a right to the English throne and crossed the Channel to claim it. This scene represents ‘The crossing’ with William’s boats before landing at Pevensey, near Hastings, where he defeated the AngloSaxons, and conquered Britain.

Ideas for your map: CONQUEST

p. 55

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

LEARNING DIGITAL • Doggerland • Stonehenge • The Celts • The Norman Conquest • The feudal system • Magna Carta PPT PDF

• The Origins: History and Society • The Middle Ages: History and Society • History narrated: Migrations and invasions ( Digital resources, Study Booster) • Royal dynasties: The Normans • Royal dynasties: The Plantagenets • StoryTelling: My father, King Alfred the Great

IN ACTION English in action

Key Facts Migrations and invasions 12.000 BCE–1200 BCE

THE FIRST INHABITANTS Some 20,000 years ago sea levels started to rise, covering part of ‘Doggerland’, the narrow piece of land that joined Britain to mainland Europe. Around 6,200 BCE a huge underwater landslide off the coast of Norway created an enormous tsunami, definitively cutting Britain off from Europe. The surviving Ancient Britons built special monuments for the dead and stone circles, like Stonehenge, probably for religious ceremonies. Different peoples continued to migrate for centuries and gradually cleared the forests to make more and more land for crops and animals.

871–1066

1200–c. 50 BCE

THE CELTS The Celts probably began raiding the British coasts during the early Iron Age; one of these tribes, the Gaels, reached the west and south-west of Britain, where they created a distinct Celtic-British culture, introducing the Celtic language. The Celts were a warlike people organised into clans led by a chief; the chief was elected by the descendants of the preceding chiefs. Clans were united with other clans into tribes guided by a leader. Celtic women could choose their husbands freely, own property such as jewellery, cattle and land, carry weapons and fight. The Celtic religion, which was based on the natural elements, was in the hands of Druids, an educated class of powerful priests. The Celts made jewellery decorated with repetitive patterns and spirals. Their literature was passed down orally; bards sang verses celebrating the Celts’ ancient world full of magic, heroes, gods and marvellous birds and beasts.

1066

1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to migrate = to leave / stay in your country

THE KINGDOM OF WESSEX

THE NORMANS

2 to separate = to cut out / off 3 to clear a forest = to let it grow / cut it down 4 to raid = to defend / attack 5 to subdue = to subjugate / represent 6 to own = to sell / possess 7 to commission = to order / refuse 8 to claim = to desire / say one has a right to something 9 to summon = to request the presence / absence of

Alfred the Great, the King of Wessex, defeated the Viking King, Guthrum, at the Battle of Edington in 878. Alfred established law and government, and in 890 he commissioned the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ( p. 26). Alfred’s son Edward the Elder and his daughter Aethelflaed ( p. 23) completed the ring of fortresses around Wessex and Mercia, and in 912, they won back Essex, East Anglia and other Danelaw territories from the Vikings. This was the first step towards the unification of the four Kingdoms of Wessex, Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, which came during Edward the Confessor’s reign (1042–1066).

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Key Facts

On Edward the Confessor’s death William, Duke of Normandy (1028–1087), claimed the throne; he won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and was proclaimed King William I (or the Conqueror). The new language of the court and government became Norman French, the dialect spoken by the invaders. A survey, called The Domesday Book (1086), was carried out to gain accurate knowledge of the new dominions. The Normans introduced feudalism. The lords (or barons) received land – the fief (feudo) – from the king. The clergy could also own land, the knights were the best soldiers serving the nobility. The peasants rented land, while serfs were landless but tied to the land. When Richard I the Lionheart (1157–99) died in France

55 BCE–410 CE

ROMAN BRITAIN

410–1066

ANGLO-SAXON SETTLEMENT

Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice (55 and 54 BCE), but the conquest of Britannia was completed only in 43 CE under Emperor Claudius. In 60 BCE Queen Boudicca ( p. 23) of the Iceni tribe led a rebellion that ended with the massacre of the Britons. By 77, the Romans controlled most of the island. They were unable to subdue Scotland, and in 122 they started building Hadrian’s Wall. They built roads and canals, cleared the land and created large areas for farming. Gradually, Britannia adopted Roman law and ways, and with them Latin. Towns were built following Roman architecture; soon London (Londinium) became the administrative capital. Christianity was introduced into Britain by Alban, a Roman soldier and martyr.

In 410 the Romans left Britannia and the Germanic tribes of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes from Northern Europe and Scandinavia subdued the Romanised Britons; they pushed the Celtic tribes mainly to the west (to Cornwall and Wales), and to the north. The Anglo-Saxons were organised in families and united into tribes. Each tribe was under the leadership of a chieftain – the ‘cyning’ (‘king’). During the 7th and 8th centuries, larger kingdoms, traditionally known as Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were created and by 850 three large kingdoms, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, were consolidated. With the Anglo-Saxons no one, not even the cyning, owned land, but landholders had to participate in the national army and to assist with building or repairing fortifications or bridges. Anglo-Saxon women had property rights but were subject to the authority of men. The Anglo-Saxons were pagan and polytheistic: they believed in supernatural entities like elves, monsters and dragons. In 597, Pope Gregory I sent a monk, Augustine, to convert the Anglo-Saxons to the Christian faith. Churches, cathedrals and monasteries were built and written culture in Latin started.

8th–10th centuries

THE VIKINGS’ INVASION The Vikings, expert sailors from today’s Denmark, Norway and Sweden, began raiding the coasts of Britain in about 700; in 793 they destroyed Lindisfarne monastery, the most important centre of Christianity in Northumbria. By the end of the 870s they controlled Danelaw, a vast territory that extended across the entire northeastern area of England.

The 12th – 15th centuries

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON AND THE BLACK DEATH in 1199 his brother John (1166–1216) became king as John I Lackland. When he decided to raise taxes in 1214 his most powerful barons forced him to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede on June 15, 1215 ( p. 24). John’s successor, Henry III, was imprisoned by Simon de Montfort, who summoned two knights and two citizens to sit in the assembly of noble men and clergy members. Edward I, Henry III’s successor, (1239–1307), summoned two representatives of the burgher class from every town and two knights from every shire (today’s county), and he included them in the Great Council which served as Parliament, called the Model Parliament. This established the principle of representation of certain groups from the common people for the first time.

Henry II of Anjou (1133–1189), the first king of the Plantagenet dynasty, ascended the throne in 1154. His decision to adapt a body of laws known as the Constitutions of Clarendon brought him into conflict with Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who feared the Church would be deprived of its rights and independence. In 1770 he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, which became a place of pilgrimage. The Black Death, a bubonic disease from Asia, struck Europe in the 14th century, and reached Britain in 1348 causing terror, the loss of between one third and a half of the population, and enormous social and economic changes. The century was also tormented by wars, with the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) on the continent, and in England the Wars of the Roses (1455–1485) between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, two noble families who contested the royal succession. The Yorkist King Richard III was defeated by the Lancastrian Henry Tudor in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Ideas for your map: MIGRATION / INVASION / LEADERSHIP / FEUDALISM / CRISES

p. 55

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

We all love a good fight! The two series Vikings and The Last Kingdom give a fascinating view of the Anglo-Saxon-Viking long-lasting conflict, their cultures and values. The popularity of the TV series lies in people’s fascination with the myths of the birth of a nation, swords, epic battles and the fight for freedom.

The Last Kingdom (2015–2022, five seasons plus a 2023 sequel) The Last Kingdom, an adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novels The Saxon Stories, is set around 800–900, when King Alfred’s Wessex stands alone, resisting the invading Danes. Uhtred, born a Saxon but raised by Vikings, is a fictional character in this violent era. In the hope of regaining his home, he decides to unite with King Alfred to combat the continuous Viking incursions. The dream of a single kingdom, England, appears for the first time in history. SURVEY MAKING 1 Organise a survey about the popularity of a TV series with teenagers, especially one about a mythical past with epic battles. The purpose of the survey is to understand what makes a TV series popular with young people.

Step 1 Prepare at least five questions. Use either multiple-choice questions, or a 1 to 5 scale (from ’very bad’ to ‘excellent’), for example: Multiple-choice question How old are you? a 15 or younger b between 16–17

18 or older

1–5 scale question How good is the acting in the TV series? 1 2 3 very bad not so bad satisfying

4 good

5 excellent

Step 2 Give out your questions to as many teenagers as you can. Step 3 Compare your findings; which age group (a, b, or c) is fonder of the TV series, and why?

From the Origins to the Middle Ages

Ideas for your map: HEROISM

p. 55

WOMEN THAT Britain‘s first women MADE HISTORY warriors IN ACTION

Boudicca, the warrior Queen

They said of this...

A free woman Boudicca, mounted in a chariot with her daughters before her, rode up to clan after clan and delivered her protest: — ‘It was customary, she knew, with Britons to fight under female captaincy; but now she was avenging, not, as a queen of glorious ancestry, her ravished realm and power, but, as a woman of the people, her liberty lost, her body tortured by the lash, the tarnished honour of her daughters.’ (Tacitus, Annals, 114–120 CE)

1 Tacitus reports Boudicca’s actions but also her own words; what is he highlighting about her?

AGENDA 2030

▲ Statue of Boudicca, Westminster Bridge, London

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians Aethelflaed (872?–918 CE) was the daughter of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Her marriage with Aethelred, Lord of Mercia, facilitated an alliance between Mercia and Wessex, the last Saxon kingdom to resist a complete Viking victory. When Aethelflaed’s husband died, she became ‘the Lady of the Mercians’, de facto queen of Mercia. She was a brilliant diplomat and made important treaties. She also led armies, built fortresses, beat back Viking attacks and led several successful campaigns into Danelaw. Today, more than 1,100 years after her death, one of the great forgotten figures in British history is emerging from the shadows. ▶ Statue of Aethelflaed, Tamworth Castle, Staffordshire

1 flogged: frustata 2 raped: violentate

WORK CREATIVE 1 Boudicca’s revolt was ferocious and devastating, but she was the victim of brutal violence, too. Aethelflaed was a military leader, but she also used the art of diplomacy. Write a short text following these guidelines: • How important is a person’s upbringing in shaping their future choices, including the negative ones? Draw your list of five key factors (parents, friends, gender, wealth, etc.), and compare them. • Identify the two most mentioned factors, and imagine the life of a person shaped by these factors in a short text, or a cartoon.

Ideas for your map: LEADERSHIP

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RIGHTS FOR ALL

Steps to civil rights Magna Carta (1215)

▲ This is one of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta dispatched throughout the kingdom.

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Rights of today

The rights to liberty and to equality represent claims of individual persons against the state, and today they are firmly accepted norms identified in international treaties and conventions. A new type of right, rights to solidarity, which represents claims of peoples and groups against the state, still lacks both legal and political recognition. The history of democratic institutions in Western Europe is interwoven1 with the struggles for the basic rights of human beings, but much is still unaccomplished2. For this reason, in 2015 world leaders agreed to plan their future development on the basis of the 17 Global Goals, whose purpose is to build a sustainable and fairer world by 2030. Each goal relates to some basic human rights. Written in 1215, Magna Carta was the first written document to establish rights to liberty. It was an agreement between King John I and the barons; copies of the document were sent out to be read out in each county of England so that everyone knew of its existence. In it, the king was forced to agree to a series of concessions concerning the rights of the community against him, and it also dealt with matters such as the reform of law and justice, trade, taxation, the freedom of the Church and the behaviour of royal officials. Only a few of the 63 clauses in Magna Carta are still of relevance today. It is also remarkable that a Council of Barons was established to enforce Magna Carta; this paved the way3 to an independent Parliament.

1 interwoven: intrecciata

2 unaccomplished: incompiuto, da farsi

3 paved the way: spianò la strada

LET’S SUM IT UP! 1 Match each summary (1–4) to the corresponding clause in Magna Carta. 1

People could only be judged according to the law, and even the king himself had to follow the law. A person should be judged by a group of their equals (not by the king or his men). The king could not demand new taxes without first obtaining the approval of the key people in his kingdom.

The barons had the right to form a committee of 25 who would monitor the king and take action against him if he failed to honour his agreement.

Nobody could be deprived of their rights, or have to pay for their rights, or be made to suffer by waiting for their rights.

CLAUSE 12 No ‘scutage’ or ‘aid’ may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent, unless it is for the ransom of our person, to make our eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry our eldest daughter. For these purposes only a reasonable ‘aid’ may be levied. ‘Aids’ from the city of London are to be treated similarly. CLAUSE 39 No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land. CLAUSE 40 To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice. CLAUSE 61 We give and grant to the barons the following security: The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter. If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to us – or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice – to declare it and claim immediate redress. If we, or in our absence abroad the chief justice, make no redress within forty days, reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon.

2 Answer the questions. 1 Which clause establishes the very idea of having inalienable rights, i.e. rights no one can be deprived of? 2 One of these clauses was known as ‘the security clause’ and it was seen as the most radical in keeping the king ‘under the control’ of the barons. Which clause is it? Why? 3 If you have made an offense in Britain today you will be judged by a jury system. Which clause anticipated (at least as a principle) this system? 4 One clause can be interpreted as the anticipation of Parliament. Which one?

From the Origins to the Middle Ages

Human rights in the Italian Constitution The Constitution of the Italian Republic is the fundamental law of the state and provides the basis of legitimacy for all laws and activities by the public authority. In 1945, the Italian people were confronted with a moral and institutional disaster following the Second World War (1939–1945) and the end of the Fascist regime. The referendum by universal suffrage – including women for the first time – of 2nd June 1946 established a Republic and the Constituent Assembly. Its members wrote the Italian Constitution, which came into effect on 1st January 1948. The Republic was to be democratic, with an elected President – an executive who answers to Parliament, an independent judiciary and a Constitutional Court. Numerous civil and political liberties were guaranteed, as shown in some of the articles from Part 1. Art. 1 L’Italia è una Repubblica democratica, fondata sul lavoro. La sovranità appartiene al popolo, che la esercita nelle forme e nei limiti della Costituzione. Art. 2 La Repubblica riconosce e garantisce i diritti inviolabili dell’uomo, sia come singolo sia nelle formazioni sociali ove si svolge la sua personalità, e richiede l’adempimento dei doveri inderogabili di solidarietà politica, economica e sociale. Art. 3 Tutti i cittadini hanno pari dignità sociale e sono eguali davanti alla legge, senza distinzione di sesso, di razza, di lingua, di religione, di opinioni politiche, di condizioni personali e sociali. È compito della Repubblica rimuovere gli ostacoli di ordine economico e sociale, che, limitando di fatto la libertà e l’eguaglianza dei cittadini, impediscono il pieno sviluppo della persona umana e l’effettiva partecipazione di tutti i lavoratori all’organizzazione politica, economica e sociale del Paese. Art. 48 (1) Sono elettori tutti i cittadini, uomini e donne, che hanno raggiunto la maggiore età. Il voto è personale ed eguale, libero e segreto. Il suo esercizio è dovere civico. Art. 68 (1) I membri del Parlamento non possono essere chiamati a rispondere delle opinioni espresse e dei voti dati nell’esercizio delle loro funzioni. Senza autorizzazione della Camera alla quale appartiene, nessun membro del Parlamento può essere sottoposto a perquisizione personale o domiciliare, né può essere arrestato o altrimenti privato della libertà personale, o mantenuto in detenzione, salvo che in esecuzione di una sentenza irrevocabile di condanna, ovvero se sia colto nell’atto di commettere un delitto per il quale è previsto l’arresto obbligatorio in flagranza.

MEDIATION 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which form of government does Italy have according to article 1? 2 Which article(s) speak(s) about political representation in our country? 3 Which article states that the Republic has to grant effective equality by removing all causes of inequality, and what area of rights does it therefore touch upon? PROJECT

Rights for all in Europe The Treaty on European Union (TEU) is a binding agreement between EU member countries which establishes EU objectives and the rules for EU institutions. The current version of the TEU entered into force in 2009 following the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) and was updated in 2016. The first part of the treaty establishes the European Union on the basis of the European Community and lays out the legal value of the treaties. 4 Engage in a communication campaign focusing on values, rights and freedom established by the European Union.

GROUP A Step 1 Gather information on The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): when and why it was issued and how it is organised. Get ready to report your findings back to the class. Step 2 What rights does it protect? Which articles expressively focus on • slavery? • the right to a fair trial? GROUP B Step 1 Gather information on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCFR): when and why it was issued and how it is organised. Get ready to report your findings back to the class. Step 2 What are the aims of the Charter? In how many chapters (or titles) is it divided? Step 3 The two groups should now engage in a communication campaign focusing on the document they have been working on (ECHR or EUCFR). Each group should first prepare an action plan which includes objectives, audience, content and campaign materials. Step 4 Follow the guidelines for a good project ( Digital resources). Step 5 Present your action plan to the class with at least one sample of your material.

Ideas for your map: HUMAN RIGHTS

p. 55

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL • Anglo-Saxon prose • Anglo-Saxon poetry The Origins: Literature and Culture

PPT

IN ACTION Which is which? 1 Half of the most commonly used words in today’s language have Old English roots. Some days of the week are ‘the day of a god’. Match the Old English words (1–8) with the modern ones (a–h). 1

mann

a Tues-day

wif

b Fri-day

mete

c wife

etan

d man

Tiw

e Wednes–day

Woden

f Thurs-day

Thor

g meat

Frig

h to eat

Key words 2 Complete the examples. • the aristocracy = people of noble birth • the clergy = ordained people 1 a duke or a duchess are members of the 2 a monk, a priest or a nun are part of the mead hall: a large building, usually belonging to a noble or the king, with a single room used as the centre of the community for feasting.

Anglo-Saxon literature (6th–beginning 11th century)

Anglo-Saxon literature is the earliest surviving collection of vernacular literature in Europe. It traces its origins back to the 6th century, when Christianity was brought to Britain, and it extends to the Norman Conquest (1066). The Germanic invaders (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes), brought their sagas, tales and legends with them. After their settlement and conversion to Christianity, their works mixed pagan themes with Christian morality. The invaders’ language was Anglo-Saxon (or Englisc), a branch of the IndoEuropean language family, that developed first into Old English (450–1066), then into Middle English and finally into Modern English. Old English soon became dominant over the Celtic dialects spoken by the Britons and also over Latin, which was in use among the elite (the aristocracy and the clergy), mainly in the south. Latin, however, did not disappear; Christian monks started a written culture by writing manuscripts in Latin, which was also spoken by churchmen and scholars.

Prose King Alfred the Great’s Wessex became England’s cultural centre in the 9th century, when Latin began to be replaced by the vernacular. Alfred’s intent was to make the intellectual and religious Latin culture accessible to the Anglo-Saxons. He had Latin manuscripts translated into English; one of them was the Benedictine monk Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), which is still a valuable document for modern historians. The king’s most important contribution to prose literature was the first compilation (around 890 CE) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It consists of annals that are the primary source for the history of England during the Anglo-Saxon period.

Poetry Anglo-Saxon poetry was originally oral and mostly improvised; therefore it remains anonymous and undated. It was passed down from generation to generation thanks to epic singers (bards) and storytellers (scops). Scops recited popular poems or improvised new ones; they sang or chanted them in public, often during meals at mead halls, in honour of the heroic actions of princes and warriors. They accompanied their songs with music, usually played on a stringed instrument. Some of these poems survived for centuries before they were finally written down by monks. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, rhyme was unknown; rhythm was given by stress and alliteration. Lines had four stresses, and the first three stresses alliterate. A line was divided into two halves by a break, or caesura. Another important feature was kenning, a simple metaphor that stands for the common name of a thing or a person; it was extensively used, mainly for ornament. Anglo-Saxon poetry is generally divided into two genres: epic and lyric.

• Epic poems The epic, or heroic poem, consists in a long narrative poem that tells the actions and incredible adventures of a hero who has to confront supernatural creatures. It was generally based on historical facts but it was also inspired by past songs and legends. Epic poems exalted the ideals of an age of warriors, whose values were bravery and heroism. However, Anglo-Saxon epics were also characterised by fate, pessimism and melancholy. The narrative centred around scenes such as a banquet in the mead hall, a battle, a voyage or a funeral, recounted in an elevated style and an extremely rich and vivid language. The first known epic in English literature is Beowulf ( p. 28), composed by an unknown poet, probably in the 8th century. It is based on a Scandinavian saga. It is a combination of legend and history, as it also includes detailed references to real historical events and tribal struggles. Inspired by the dark, wild scenery of Scandinavia, Beowulf is an example of the mixture of pagan themes (war, courage, fame) and new Christian ideals (faith in God, Paradise, the futility of all earthly things).

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Anglo-Saxon literature (6 th–beginning 11 th century)

IN ACTION Look and think

The Norns decide man’s fate

• Elegies Elegies are short lyric poems of lamentation or regret, generally in the form of a dramatic monologue about lost happiness. A common theme is exile, intended as both physical and mental isolation from society. Other main themes are the loneliness generated by the protagonist’s loss of friends and his nostalgia for a happier past. Resigned melancholy and a strong sense of fate (wyrd in Old English), accepted with resignation, are typical of much Old English poetry. Unlike epic poetry, where female characters are generally absent, elegies often mark the presence of women, who are sometimes also characterised as protagonists. The Exeter Book, a manuscript produced by a single scribe around 950, contains religious verse, nearly 100 riddles (something confusing and difficult to solve), a heroic narrative, and the few existing elegies in Old English, among which the most famous are The Wife’s Lament, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, and The Husband’s Message. The Wanderer is anonymous, and the poem is actually untitled. It starts with a third person narrator and then moves to the Wanderer’s own lament for his exile and the loss of the comfort of his previous life. The reason of the Wanderer’s exile is unknown; he may have been banished from his land after his lord’s death.

MIND MAP ▲ Alois Delug, The Norns (1895)

In Norse, Greek and Roman mythology, three women – the Norns in the Northern myth – represent fate; they spin, measure and cut the thread that symbolises a person’s life. 3 Answer the questions. 1 What colours dominate in the painting, and why?

Anglo-Saxon literature

Prose

Latin – Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

Poetry

Old English – Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

2 What do spinning, measuring and cutting stand for in a person’s life?

Epic poetry

anonymous

lamentation or regret

bravery – heroism

loneliness – melancholy – fate

fate – pessimism – melancholy

3 Is fate still a valid concept in your opinion?

Elegies

The Exeter Book (The Wanderer)

Beowulf

CHECK OUT 2 What do the following definitions correspond to?

1 Are these statements true (T) or false (F)? Correct the false ones. 1 When the Romans left Britain, Latin and a number of Celtic dialects were spoken on the island.

T F

2 These dialects developed into Old English.

T F

3 Anglo-Saxon literature contains elements of Germanic sagas, tales and legends.

T F

4 Anglo-Saxon poetry can be roughly divided into two categories, epics and prose. T F 5 Beowulf is the first known example of an epic in Old English.

T F

6 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was a piece of prose written in Old English and sponsored by King Alfred the Great.

T F

7 The Exeter Book is a manuscript of Anglo-Saxon poetry containing a number of elegies.

T F

8 Old English was spoken until the Norman Conquest.

T F

simple metaphor used in place of a name in A Anglo-Saxon poetry.

form of poetry in Old English literature generally A based on the deeds of warriors and heroes.

series of annals begun in 890 dealing with the A history of England during the Anglo-Saxon period.

manuscript produced around 950 containing the A largest collection of Old English poetry in existence.

lyric poem of lamentation or regret in the form of A a monologue.

Ideas for your map: HEROISM

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Epic poem

Beowulf (early 8th century) Anonymous

LEARNING DIGITAL Beowulf Beowulf

PPT

• Full plot • Beowulf: a long-lasting hero • Beowulf, epic or elegiac? • Across time and space: Heroes and anti-heroes • They would kill me! • The Wanderer

PDF

The epic poem

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Search the web for adaptations of Beowulf. What types of works (poems, novels, films, etc.) have been made? Choose the one which interests you the most and present it to the class. English in action 2 Complete with words from the text. 1 to write trascrivere

2 to narrare

3 to affliggere

3 Match each description (a–e) with its kenning from Old English poetry (1–5), and explain what they mean in your own words. 1

bone house

heaven’s candle

sleep of the sword

ring giver

helmet bearer

a king

d death

b body

e sun

• The poem consists of 3,182 alliterative lines, and it is believed to have been composed in the 8th century by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet as a homage to a dead king. There are references to historical events and tribal battles mixed with elements from Scandinavian legends and sagas. After a period of oral transmission, the poem was probably written down by a scholar in the 11th century. • The story is set in what is now Scandinavia in the first half of the 6th century, in a world moving from paganism to emerging Christianity. It recounts the actions of the hero Beowulf, who fights against supernatural creatures in a hostile natural setting (the wild landscapes of Denmark and Geatland, the land of the Geats in Sweden). The epic also provides a picture of 6th-century tribal life, governed by a rigid hierarchy and often plagued by war and violence.

Features and themes

Which is which?

c warrior

• Beowulf is considered one of the greatest epic poems ever written. It has been adapted in many forms and has influenced modern poets and fiction-writers. J.R.R. Tolkien, professor of Anglo-Saxon literature at Oxford ( 454), studied the poem intensively and recreated a similar world in some of his works, like The Hobbit. Smaug represents the typical fire-breathing dragon from Norse mythology, which became known in Beowulf.

• The poem has many features of epics (plot, characters, themes, setting). The plot develops around the presence of a great hero who has incredible strength and courage. There is a vast setting both in time and in space: the action takes place in different places spanning different periods of Beowulf’s life and is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator. • The hero’s society is based on clans and is defined in terms of strong kinship (family ties). Its main values are tribal loyalty, honour, courage and generosity, together with the continuous battle between good and evil. These are also the main themes of the poem. The kennings used for Grendel underline his role as the force of evil: ‘shepherd of evil’, ‘guardian of crime’, ‘seed of Cain’ (a descendant of Cain, the first murderer in the Bible). • Nature is also fundamental. The landscape is cold, dark and hostile. In this wild northern scenery, the writer introduces a general atmosphere of melancholy and a deep sense of doom (tragic destiny). Fate (wyrd) rules in this hostile world and human determination cannot overcome it. Despite Beowulf’s sacrifice, in the end the Geats are tragically destined to lose their independence.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

THE PLOT Beowulf, the nephew of the Geats’ King Hygelac, crosses the sea to help Hrothgar, King of the Danes. Grendel, a terrible man-eating monster, has been devouring Hrothgar’s men every night for twelve years in Hrothgar’s residence, Heorot. Beowulf and his warriors sleep in Hrothgar’s mead hall; the monster soon arrives and kills one of the men. In the furious fight between Grendel and Beowulf, the hero tears off the monster‘s arm and kills him. Grendel’s mother wants to avenge her son but Beowulf kills her in her underwater cave with the help of a magic sword. Fifty years later, in the Geatland, a fire-breathing dragon starts killing the Geats. Beowulf, now King of the Geats, is old but he confronts the monster with only the help of young Wiglaf, his retainer (servant). Beowulf manages to kill the dragon but he is mortally wounded. He dies after telling Wiglaf how he wants to be buried. Beowulf’s body is burnt on a huge pyre and then buried in a barrow (a large pile of soil over a place where people were buried in ancient times) by the coast. A messenger’s prophecy reveals to the Geats their final miserable destiny of defeat and slavery.

IN ACTION

Style and language

Which is which?

The poem presents some typical features of Old English epic poetry:

4 Which words/phrases (a-e) do these definitions (1-5) correspond to? 1

a writer whose identity is not known

the land of the Geats

family ties

nrhymed verse based on u alliteration

a simile that stands for a place or person

a kinship

• Each long line is divided into two halves by a caesura (a pause); the two halves are held together by alliteration. • Assonance is also employed to create internal rhyme and add rhythm. • Kennings are widely used to name a person, place or thing. The style is formal; the language is sophisticated and sometimes exaggerated through the use of hyperbole. Beowulf has been translated into Modern English several times because Old English is too difficult for the modern reader to understand. The version by Nobel prize poet Seamus Heaney ( 470) often preserves the original features of the Old English text, for example, through the extensive use of alliteration.

b kenning c alliterative verse

MIND MAP

d anonymous author

Beowulf

e Geatland

epic poem

anonymous

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What type of society was Beowulf’s? 2 What is a ‘kenning’? Can you give an example? 3 What values are highlighted in this epic? 4 What features of the epic poem can we find in Beowulf? 5 What is the Old English word for ‘fate’ and how important is it in Beowulf?

mix of history and legend

kinship – tribal loyalty – fate – glory good vs evil

paganism and Christianity

2 Match each sentence (1–4) to its correct half (a–d). 1

The battle between good and evil

Beowulf sacrifices himself but

Beowulf has been translated into

Each line is divided into two halves by a caesura and

the Geats will lose their independence in the end.

Modern English several times.

never comes to an end.

held together by alliteration.

Ideas for your map: HEROISM

p. 55

AUTHORS AND WORKS Epic poem LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis Visual analysis

PDF

STEP IN

T1 The fight with Grendel

Beowulf

Grendel has just arrived in Hrothgar’s banqueting hall at Heorot, where Beowulf and his warriors are sleeping. He is looking for men to devour, but, instead, has to face Beowulf.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. escape • bed • powerful • weakens • experienced • drinks • teeth • strength • moves

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

In Hrothgar’s hall, Beowulf is silently watching Grendel’s (1) one of the Geat warriors and kills him, (2)

. The monster grabs his blood and tears his limbs off him

. Then he attacks Beowulf who is lying on his (4)

with his (3)

. Beowulf’s handgrip is so (6)

but is shocked by the hero’s (5) that it is unlike anything Grendel has ever (7) ▲ Illustration to the heroic

poem Beowulf. The evil monster Grendel with horns, claws and sharp teeth.

but he can’t because Beowulf overpowers him while Grendel’s strength

(9)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Mighty and canny, Hygelac’s kinsman was keenly watching for the first move the monster would make. Nor did the creature keep him waiting but struck suddenly and started in; he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench, bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body utterly lifeless, eaten up hand and foot. Venturing closer, his talon was raised to attack Beowulf where he lay on the bed; he was bearing in with open claw when the alert hero’s comeback and armlock forestalled him utterly. The captain of evil discovered himself in a handgrip harder than anything he had ever encountered in any man on the face of the earth. Every bone in his body quailed and recoiled but he could not escape. He was desperate to flee to his den with the devil’s litter, for in all his days he had never been clamped or cornered like this. Then Hygelac’s trusty retainer recalled his bedtime speech, sprang to his feet and got a firm hold. Fingers were bursting, the monster back-tracking, the man overpowering. The dread of the land was desperate to escape 1

before. The monster wants to

(8)

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

Potente e accorto, il nipote di Hygelac osservava acutamente la prima mossa che avrebbe fatto il mostro. E la creatura non lo tenne in attesa, ma attaccò e colpì all’improvviso; afferrò e straziò un uomo sulla sua panca, morse fin dentro le giunture delle sue ossa, ingoiò il suo sangue, e si ingozzò della sua carne a pezzi, lasciando il corpo, completamente senza vita, divorato dalle mani ai piedi. Mentre si avvicinava, il suo artiglio era sollevato per attaccare Beowulf laddove egli giaceva, sul letto, e stava avanzando con gli artigli aperti, quando la pronta reazione dell’eroe e la presa lo anticiparono totalmente. Il capitano del male si ritrovò così bloccato da una presa più forte di quante ne avesse mai incontrate in nessun luogo sulla faccia della terra. Ogni osso del suo corpo scricchiolò e si piegò, ma non riuscì a liberarsi. Smaniava di fuggire a nascondersi nel suo covo con la nidiata del diavolo, perché in tutti i suoi giorni non era mai stato così circondato e inchiodato. Poi il fido suddito di Hygelac ricordò il suo discorso di buona notte, balzò in piedi e lo afferrò saldamente. Le dita gli si spezzarono, il mostro arretrava, l’uomo lo schiacciava. Il flagello della terra bramava fuggire

Beowulf to take a roundabout road and flee to his liar in the fens. The latching power 30 in his fingers weakened; it was the worst trip the terror-monger had taken to Heorot.

prendere una via tortuosa e ritrovare il suo covo nelle paludi. La stretta delle sue dita andava indebolendosi; fu il viaggio peggiore che quel terrore di tutti avesse fatto a Heorot.

(Modern English version by Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, 1999) UNDERSTAND 4

2 Answer the questions. 1 Who is ‘Hygelac’s kinsman’? 2 Who strikes first, Beowulf or Grendel? 3 Who does the monster attack first? 4 Who is ‘the captain of evil’? 5 Who is stronger and will win, Beowulf or Grendel? 6 What is Grendel’s desperate wish? ANALYSE

2 Alliteration is a key element of the poem Beowulf in Old English, as you can hear in the Old English version of ll. 27–31. How often is it used in the version in Modern English by Seamus Heaney, and why?

Mynte se mæra, þær he meahte swa, widre gewindan ond on weg þanon fleon on fen-hopu; wiste his fingra geweald on grames grapum; þæt wæs geocor sið þæt se hearm-scaþa to Heorute ateah. (From Beowulf)

3 Answer the questions. 1 What expressions and adjectives are used to describe Beowulf and Grendel, and what do they highlight about each character? 2 How violent is Grendel’s first attack? 3 Grendel is astonished and taken aback by Beowulf’s physical superiority. Underline the words that reflect the monster’s awareness of his weakness. 4 Beowulf and Grendel stand for the forces of good and evil respectively. The monster fears the warrior and his own end; what may this suggest?

INTERPRET 5 Work creative The passage presents more of Grendel’s reactions and thoughts than of Beowulf’s. Rewrite the episode in about 80 words so that Beowulf’s reactions and thoughts are dominant. Which version is more dramatic in your opinion? PDF

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Shield Maiden (2023) by Sharon Emmerichs Born in Sweden to American parents, Sharon Emmerichs teaches early British literature and Shakespeare at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research areas include feminist theory and eco-critical studies. Shield Maiden is her debut novel.

Can women be great warriors? Fryda has grown up listening to her uncle King Beowulf’s adventurous stories and is keen to follow in his footsteps. Despite the terrible accident that permanently damaged her hand when she was 13, she’s ready to do whatever it takes to make her dream come true.

“

I ’ve had a hard time finding interesting YA novels recently. I was fed up with the boring plots and dumb characters in most of them, so Emmerichs’ new book was a welcome relief! Shield Maiden definitely stands out from what is currently on the market and I‘m sure fans of YA fantasy romance will enjoy it as a way to learn about the legend of Beowulf from a different POV.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Amanda’s review of the book. Discuss the following points: • Can women be as strong as men?

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with the epic poem Beowulf.

• Is physical strength the most important feature of a hero? • What makes the legend of Beowulf interesting or boring for a YA reader? 31

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL • Medieval literature • Romances • Ballads The Middle Ages: Literature and Culture

PPT PDF

• The Cuckoo Song • Films for thought: Knights and ladies, what a passion! • Rights for all: Poverty, the greatest evil of all times • Across time and space: Are pilgrimages and crusades here to stay?

PDF

Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur DT1 The sword in the stone

Medieval literature The literature of the period was first characterised by the influence of Norman-French culture and Latin, and later by the emergence of native English works by many authors; Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Thomas Malory, and numerous anonymous authors. They used Middle English, a new language which developed as a result of the fusion of Old English dialects, English Norman-French and Latin. The development of religious drama ( p. 38) also contributed to establishing the primary role of Middle English since the plays were written in different regional dialects. Latin was the language used for one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of Britain, 1135–1139), a fictional history of Britain written by a Welsh monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100?–1154). It is a collection of legends and historical events which contributed to the diffusion of the Arthurian Cycle, with King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table and the enchanter Merlin. A step that marked the importance of Middle English in its different varieties, was the Statute of Pleading, an Act of Parliament which was passed in 1362. It established that the language of the law was to be Middle English so that common people could understand what they were accused of in court. Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press in Germany in 1470, and the first English printer, William Caxton, printed books from 1476. Most of the 100 books he printed before dying in 1492 were written in English, and the first was Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

IN ACTION Across time and space

The myth of kingship

Poetry Poetry in Middle English Religious poetry was pervaded by mysticism and usually drew episodes from Christ’s and the Virgin Mary’s lives, while secular poetry included many genres. The romance was a very popular form at court, but the greatest contribution to the development of a national literature came from two late 14th century poets, Geoffrey Chaucer ( p. 46) and William Langland ( p. 33). Popular poetry included lyrics, poetry of protest and ballads.

1 Answer the questions. 1 Look at Gallos (2016), a 2.4m bronze statue of King Arthur by Rubin Eynon placed on a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, and the 5.5 metre large Round Table (built about 1290) hanging in Winchester castle. How different is the representation of medieval kingship in the two artefacts? 2 Which artefact appeals to you more? Why? troubadours: poet-musicians (from Provence, Catalonia and northern Italy) who wrote poems about love and chivalry.

• Romance In 12th-century France, minstrels and troubadours developed the conventions and themes of courtly love in ‘romances’, tales in verse such as the works of Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Thomas Malory, and a woman writer, Christine de Pizan ( p. 35). A lady, usually married and therefore out of reach, inspires the knight’s brave deeds; their idealised relationship inspires the knight to serve his lady with the same obedience, submission and loyalty which he owes to his lord in the feudal system. Romances were most popular among the French-speaking court audiences of France and AngloNorman England, and in particular among aristocratic women, who were interested in stories in which they played more central roles. Women started to appear as clearly defined individuals and this elevated their position in society. In the romances, often set at the court of King Arthur, the main themes were courtly love and chivalry and they were characterised by adventures, supernatural encounters, exotic settings and magic objects. The first romances in Middle English appeared in the mid-14th century; alliterative verse was replaced by rhyming lines, with a fixed number of feet and regular rhythms. The theme of romantic love was generally less present than in French works. One of the most famous English romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, was composed at the end of the 1300s: it is the story of the challenge between Sir Gawain, one of the knights of the Round Table, and the Green Knight, a giant who one night unexpectedly appears at Camelot.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Medieval literature – Poetry

The romance: steps towards a myth • 1135–39 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae: Arthur is a mythical figure descending from Aeneas. • 1135–90 Chrétien de Troyes’s Chansons de Geste: magic elements of the Celtic legends and the courtly ideal of Provençal lyrics are fused, and the characters of Perceval and Launcelot and the search for the Holy Grail are introduced. • Early 13th century Corpus Launcelot-Graal, anonymous: the incoherent material is reorganised. • 1485 Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur: the complete corpus is published by William Caxton.

IN ACTION The sound of the time

Summer brings new life Sumer is icumen in, Luthde sing cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med And springth the wde nu Sing cuccu!

Not all romances were in verse, though. Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1470) is a long prose romance about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. It is a collection of stories which Malory (1405–71) transcribed from the oral tradition, giving them narrative unity. The stories were then published by William Caxton in 1485. Le Morte d’Arthur contributed to creating the myth of King Arthur as it represents the celebration of the world of chivalry and the reconstruction of the mythical past of Britain. Unlike the French models, which focused on courtly love and its conventions, the work concentrates on the representation of knighthood, its ideals, values and ethical code. The tales tell the story of the rise and fall of King Arthur and the adventures of the noble Knights of the Round Table. Conflict arises when the code of honour and loyalty is broken, as happens with the Launcelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle. Launcelot, one of Arthur’s knights, and Guinevere, Arthur’s wife, both betray Arthur by going beyond the spiritualised adoration of courtly love and making love. He betrays his lord and she betrays her husband; and this makes both Arthur and his land sick, sending the king’s knights on the quest for the Holy Grail, the sacred cup of Christ.

MIND MAP

Statute of Pleading

courtly love

3 Listen to the song. Is there one voice singing, or more? Describe its mood in your own words.

3 The Latin words (written in red ink) tell the tale of God sacrificing his only son to win death for mankind. The English version (written in black) describes the native flora and fauna awakening to the warm weather of summer. Do you see any connection between the two texts? Web quest 4 Search the web for more lyrics of the Medieval period. Which one do you like best? Why?

Poetry in Middle English

William Caxton’s printing press

knight and lady

loyalty – submission

romance Sir Gawin and the Green Knight chivalry King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

Poetry in the 14th century • Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland The late 14th century saw the gradual fusion of Norman with Anglo-Saxon into Middle English; Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?–1400), took Middle English to its finest point in The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400 p. 48), a masterpiece of wit and humour and a lively portrait of English society in the very late 14th century. The Tales consist of a number of short stories told by various pilgrims from all social classes on their way to Canterbury. Another great poetic voice of the century was William Langland (1332–1400); his work Piers Plowman (1362) is an allegorical dream-vision, in which William, the dreamer and protagonist, has visions including the ‘fair field full of folk’ (i.e., this world and mankind), corrupted by the Seven Deadly Sins. The work offers the reader a realistic picture of the poorer classes in English medieval society.

• Lyrics Lyrics were short poetic compositions set to music expressing a sense of joy, generally inspired by the awakening of nature. The new idea of nature contrasted with the cruel spirit of Anglo-Saxon poetry; with its blue skies and sunshine, nature was no longer an enemy but a friend to man. The earliest English lyric (about 1260), Sumer is icumen in, was discovered in a manuscript containing religious lyrics in Latin and secular lyrics in Middle English. The short poem is a celebration of the arrival of summer, with the cuckoo singing to announce the new season. 33

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

• Poetry of protest From the 13th century onwards, national events became the source of inspiration for a new type of popular poetry reflecting the reality and feelings of the common people. The most famous is The Song of the Husbandman (14th century), the first complaint poem in English, expressing the troubles of medieval farmers and pity for the victims of oppression. It may have inspired William Langland’s Piers Plowman.

• Ballads Ballads were anonymous oral poems accompanied by music and dance; they were composed between the 13th and 14th centuries and passed down orally from generation to generation. The author is objective and never attempts to interpret the actions or the characters of the story. They reflect social conditions of the period and can be grouped into five main groups depending on their theme: • domestic tragedies of love and jealousy • the supernatural (ghosts, witches, magic, and superstition) • outlaws, for example Robin Hood • religious subjects • rivalry between the English and the Scots in the border ballads (for the fight along the Scottish border) The story is usually simple, and it focuses on a single dramatic episode (murder, revenge, unfaithful lovers, etc.). Characterisation is minimal: the characters reveal themselves through their actions. The most common stanza generally consists of four lines, often rhyming ABCB or ABAB. Refrain is a typical feature, together with the repetition of stanzas with slight variations as the story advances, a technique called ‘incremental repetition’. Suspense accumulates with each variation, until the climax is reached. One of the most famous British ballads is Geordie (around 16th century p. 44). The protagonist is a young woman who rides to the London Court of Justice to ask for her lover’s release from prison. ▲ Medieval Troubadours MIND MAP

Middle English

anonymous – oral

Poetry in the 14th century

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

William Langland, Piers Plowman

lyrics

Late 14th-century English society

allegorical dream – vision

music – nature

domestic tragedy

supernatural

outlaw

religion

poetry of protest

border: English vs Scots

ballads

ballad stanza

CHECK OUT 1 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones.

5 William Langland’s poetic work, Piers Plowman, gives a picture of the poorer classes in English medieval society.

T F

1 The Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth is a 12th-century collection of legends and historical events reconstructing the mythical origins of Britain.

6 Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is a long romance in verse about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

T F

7 In courtly love the lady marries the lover who is devoted to her.

T F

2 The 1362 Statute of Pleading established that the language of the law and the courts would be French from that moment on. T F

8 Lyrics depict a cruel nature, similar to the one typical of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

T F

3 The term ‘romance’ refers to a form of narrative literature popular in France and Anglo-Norman England.

T F

9 Songs of protest are the first expression of the miserable conditions of the humblest classes.

T F

4 Romances were tales about the chivalric adventures of knights and their ladies, often set at the court of King Arthur.

T F

10 The themes of ballads are happy love and the celebration of the beauty of nature.

T F

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Medieval literature – Poetry

WOMEN THAT An anchoress MADE HISTORY and a woman writer

AGENDA 2030

Julian of Norwich (1342–c.1416) and Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) were two exceptional medieval women. Not much is known of Julian of Norwich’s life; she was an illiterate anchoress1 of a church in Norwich during many of the waves of the Black Death that struck the city from 1348 to 1369. Her book of visions Revelations of the Divine Love was written in Middle English, and it shows the power of a woman expressing her thoughts and feelings. De Pizan was the first woman writer in Europe; she wrote lyric poetry and a famous allegorical work, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), in French. Born in Venice, she was educated at the court of Charles V in France and also thanks to her husband, a nobleman she married at the age of 15, she was able to develop her talent in a way usually denied to women at that time. When her husband died, she was left with three children and turned to writing for a living.

Julian of Norwich Revelations of Divine love (1373, short version – 1388? long version) The short version was probably written after Julian recovered from the illness that nearly killed her in 1373. The work talks about mystical truths concerning death and God revealed to her in 16 visions, and it contains many powerful images. The most famous one presents the universe as a hazelnut2 lying in the palm of her hand, and yet protected by the love of God.

Christine de Pizan The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) Three virtues – Reason, Rectitude and Justice – inspire Christine to write about heroines from the past and the present (women who ruled in history, who honoured their parents, guarded their chastity, and became martyrs for their faith). They formed the foundations, the walls and the towers of the allegorical City of Ladies, where all women could be safe from the attacks of men. 1 anchoress: anacoreta (religiosa che vive in solitudine e preghiera)

2 hazelnut: nocciola

WORK CREATIVE They said of this... Some students were asked to choose their favourites in Medieval literature, and write about them. Here is what one student chose to say about the two women writers, whom she selected as her favourites: The two books that I found to be the most important to me were probably by Julian and de Pizan, for very different reasons. Julian’s text challenged me. Although I ended the book with disagreeing about most of what Julian was saying, I felt as though the experience of the book was what made it important to me. On the other hand, with de Pizan the book spoke less on Christianity and more on my idea of femininity. De Pizan’s balance between timidity and femininity was worth noting and worth speaking about, because of how revolutionary her ideas must have seemed to be at the time.

1 The student did not agree with what Julian said, but she felt challenged by reading her book. What makes a book worth reading in your opinion? Share your view with your class. 2 The student admires de Pizan for her ‘revolutionary ideas’. Make a presentation about what can make an idea revolutionary, focusing on the situation of women today in Western and non-Western societies.

Ideas for your map: LEADERSHIP

p. 55

THE ARTS

The rich arts of the Middle Ages Architecture was particularly important in the Middle Ages. The Norman Conquest boosted the construction of fortified castles: about 400 were built, first in wood and then in stone, and almost all of them can be visited today. The desire to celebrate the Christian faith led to the construction of churches and cathedrals adorned with stained glass windows showing the life of Christ and the saints, and to illuminated manuscripts, hand-written books with painted decoration in gold or silver.

Colchester Castle Colchester Castle is a Norman castle built by William the Conqueror on top of the Roman Temple of Claudius. The Norman keep (torrione) is mostly intact and is the largest in Europe.

Canterbury Cathedral Founded by St Augustine in 597 CE, Canterbury Cathedral is a pilgrimage destination, a masterpiece of art and architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is characterised by two different architectural styles, the Romanesque with completely rounded arches, and the Early Gothic style (mid-12th to mid-13th century), with slightly pointed arches.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages

Stained glass in Canterbury Cathedral

The Lindisfarne Gospels

The beautiful stained glass shows Thomas à Becket being murdered by three knights with close ties to King Henry II in Canterbury Cathedral on 29th December 1170.

The manuscript of the Gospels was produced at the monastery of Lindisfarne, a small island off the coast of Northumbria, in the late 7th or early 8th century. The style of the illuminations combines Anglo-Saxon and Celtic themes.

WEB QUEST – WORK CREATIVE 1 Search the web for information concerning the example of medieval art (Norman castles, Gothic cathedrals, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts) that appeals the most to you. Prepare an itinerary for a tourist who wants to see the greatest masterpieces of this example of medieval art, and write a short dialogue where you imagine presenting them your itinerary. DISCUSS 2 Art played a key role in shaping the individual conscience and collective society in the Middle Ages. Do you think it plays a similar role in our time?

Ideas for your map: BEAUTY

p. 55

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Medieval drama

IN ACTION Mediation 1 Read your Italian textbook, and prepare a mind map summarising the main literary expressions of Italian medieval literature of the 14th century. Then compare it with English literature of the time. What do they have in common? How do they differ?

Medieval drama Medieval English drama had a religious origin; the three main genres were Mystery/Miracle plays, Morality plays and interludes. By the end of the Middle Ages, drama had become an established form of entertainment presented by itinerant groups of performers on semipermanent stages.

• Mystery and Miracle plays Though there is no sharp distinction between Mysteries and Miracles, scholars claim that the main theme of Mysteries is the redemption of man, while Miracles are more concerned with episodes from the lives of Saints. Mystery plays developed from the Church liturgy: in the beginning, short dialogues in Latin from the Gospels were recited in church. Later Middle English replaced Latin, and dialogues characterised by realism and humour were added. There was no sacred reverence for the ‘holy matter’ presented in the Bible; instead, characters were made fun of to make their vicissitudes and personalities close to people. The purpose was to make people laugh and understand the mysteries of the faith. In The Deluge, Noah is a frightened old man while his wife is stubborn and brave; she wants her friends to join her on the ark. She voices the underlying question behind God’s choice of only a few to be saved, ‘Why can’t I save all those I love from death?’ She finally consents to getting on board but as soon as she gets onto the boat, she punches Noah and knocks him over. The scene was most certainly accompanied by great laughter as the saintly man on God’s mission proves to be a small man full of fear and married to a much stronger woman than him. Similarly, in The Shepherd’s Play a shepherd steals a lamb and hides it in a cradle the night the Infant Christ is born; the lamb in the cradle reminds the audience that Christ is the Lamb of God, teaching them an important truth of the faith. It also made them laugh at the funny scene of the shepherd desperately looking for a place to hide the stolen lamb. In a later phase the plays were moved outside the church; the performances presented the history of mankind as narrated in the Bible, i.e. as waiting for the salvation brought by Christ. With time, ‘cycles’ (a series of plays focusing on significant episodes of the Old and New Testament) were organised by guilds during their trade fairs in cities like Chester, York, Wakefield and Coventry. During the feast of Corpus Christi in York 48 plays all dealing with the Scriptures were performed. Each guild contributed to a play: the Ship builders were in charge of Noah’s ark, the Bakers of the Last Supper, the Fishmongers of the Flood, depending on their skills. The actors were nonprofessional and the stage, a six-wheel carriage called pageant, was movable so that a play could be repeated all around the city to enable as many people as possible to see it.

▶ A mystery performance in Coventry in the 1400s or 1500s with the pageant surrounded by the audience.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – M edieval drama

• Morality plays and Interludes Morality plays (or Moralities) were popular in the 15th and 16th centuries; they reflected the struggle between good and evil. Characters were allegorical personifications of virtues and vices, fighting for man’s soul. The masterpiece of Morality plays is Everyman (c. 1495), which deals with the theme of Christian death as man’s ultimate destiny. Interludes, comic dialogues occasionally inserted into other forms of entertainment (Miracles or Moralities), gradually became separate plays. They were performed by small companies of professional actors; they dealt with secular issues, and focused only on humour, satire, and real characters. They were the last step in the transition from medieval to Renaissance drama; Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and their contemporaries grew up watching moralities and interludes ( p. 38).

MIND MAP

Religious origin – Latin – Church

▲ A rare copy of the famous Morality play Everyman

Medieval drama

Mystery/Miracle plays

Morality plays

Interludes

Bible – lives of Saints

good vs evil

secular plays

Middle English

allegory – vice and virtue

humour – satire

realism – humour

Everyman

real characters

cycles – pageant CHECK OUT 1 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones. 1 Medieval drama originated from professional actors playing in churches.

T F

2 The plays were organised in cycles to be repeated every Sunday over the year.

T F

3 Miracle/Mystery plays were about episodes of the Bible or the lives of Saints.

T F

4 Morality plays present the fight of good vs evil in allegorical terms.

T F

5 Morality plays were gradually replaced by Miracle plays.

T F

6 Both Miracle plays and Interludes had humour to entertain the audience.

T F

7 Medieval drama came to an end before the age of Marlowe and Shakespeare.

T F

Ideas for your map: RELIGION/ILLUSION

p. 55

Lord Randal

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(about 13th century) Anonymous

Ballad

T2 Lord Randal

LEARNING DIGITAL

Lord Randal is an Anglo-Scottish border ballad composed probably between the 13th and 15th centuries. Through the dialogue between Lord Randal and his mother, the reader learns that the young man has been poisoned by his lover and is going to die. The ballad develops through incremental repetition with slight modifications of the stanzas until its tragic climax.

Interactive analysis • Visual analysis • Translation

PDF

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. questions • poisoned • dogs • hunting • curses • heirs • tired

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

A young lord rides back home to his mother after (1)

with his dogs and hawks in the

. His mother asks him (3)

woods, but he feels terribly (2)

, and he tells her

that in the woods he met his lover, who prepared him fried eels. He gave the leftovers of his meal to his (4)

, who died. The mother tells her son that he has been (5)

him about his testament. He names his (6) his ‘true love’ he (7)

, and asks

: his mother, his sister and his brother. As for

her.

Now read the ballad and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND

1 ha’: have 2 wearied wi’: sono stanco di 3 and fain wad’: e mi piacerebbe 4 An’ wha met ye: and whom did you meet 5 Eels: anguille 6 And wha gat you leavins: and who got your leavings (e chi ha avuto i tuoi avanzi) 7 hawks… hounds: i miei falchi e i miei cani da caccia

O where ha’1 you been, Lord Randal my son? And where ha’ you been, my handsome young man? I ha’ been at the greenwood; mother, make my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’2 hunting and fain wad’3 lie down.

An’ wha met ye4 there, Lord Randal my son? An’ wha met you there, my handsome young man? O I met wi’ my true-love; mother, make my bed soon, For I’m wearied wi’ hunting and fain wad’ lie down.

2 Answer the questions. 1 Who asks the question? 2 Who answers the question?

And what did she give you, Lord Randal my son? And what did she give you, my handsome young man? Eels5 fried in a pan; mother, make my bed soon, 12 For I’m wearied wi’ hunting and fain wad’ lie down. And wha gat you leavins6, Lord Randal my son? And wha gat you leavins, my handsome young man? My hawks and my hounds7; mother, make my bed soon, 16 For I’m wearied wi’ hunting and fain wad’ lie down. And what becam of them, Lord Randal my son? And what becam of them, my handsome young man? They stretched their legs out an’ died; mother, make my bed soon, 20 For I’m wearied wi’ hunting and fain wad’ lie down.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal my son. O I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man. O yes, I am poisoned; mother, make my bed soon, 24 For I’m sick at the heart and fain wad’ lie down. What d’ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal my son? What d’ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man? Four and twenty milk kye8; mother, make my bed soon, 28 For I’m sick at the heart and fain wad’ lie down. What d’ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal my son? What d’ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man? My gold and my silver; mother, make my bed soon, 32 For I’m sick at the heart and fain wad’ lie down.

Lord Randal

3 What does Lord Randal understand now?

4 What does he leave to his mother?

5 And to his sister?

What d’ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal my son? What d’ye leave to your brother, my handsome young man? My houses and my lands; mother, make my bed soon, 36 For I’m sick at the heart and fain wad’ lie down. 6 And to his brother?

What d’ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal my son? What d’ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man? I leave hell and fire; mother, make my bed soon, 40 For I’m sick at the heart and fain wad’ lie down. 7 And to his true love? 8 Why did the woman kill the lord?

8 kye: cow (mucca da latte)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Lord Randal goes hunting, and has possessions that he can leave to his relatives. What social class of the feudal system may he belong to? 2 What feeling do Lord Randal’s presents reveal for his mother, sister and brother? 3 What feeling does his present for his true love reveal for her? 4 Underline all the lines or parts of lines that remain exactly the same throughout the ballad. What happens in the lines that are not underlined? 5 In each stanza the whole last line is a refrain. Where does it change? Why? INTERPRET 4 Focus on the mother’s questions. Could both interpretations of her attitude (A and B) be acceptable? A

She suspects something is terribly wrong about her son’s sickness from the beginning.

She asks the ordinary questions about how he spent the day that any considerate mother could ask.

WEB QUEST 5 Lord Randal was transmitted orally in many slightly different versions and was first published by the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03). Search the web for more versions of the ballad also with music, for example Bob Dylan’s adaptation A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Choose the version you like best and compare it to the one you have read. Which one do you prefer, and why? PDF

Your text explained

▲ Illustration by Arthur Rackham for Lord Randal in Some British Ballads (1919)

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StoryTelling The strange case of Lord Randal • Read Lord Randal’s story in the form of a newspaper article.

Jealousy Crime in the Woods of the Anglo-Scottish Border Woman found guilty of poisoning her young aristocratic lover A 24-year-old woman was arrested for killing her fiancé with poison last week, police said today. The woman, whose identity is being kept secret, is accused of poisoning L. R., the eldest son of a prominent aristocratic family in the area, who died at his mother’s home last week. He had eaten food containing a powerful sedative. The young man’s hunting dogs, which also ate some of the poisoned food, died. According to the police, L. R. went hunting in the woods, where he met his fiancée. The two then went to the woman’s house, where he ate eels cooked by the housemaid. Yesterday a witness, a hunter

who happened to be passing by on the day of the murder, came forward to the police and reported hearing the two lovers quarrelling, apparently for reasons of jealousy. After eating the fish, the young man felt sick but managed to ride to his mother’s house, police said. According to the woman her son was in a semi-comatose state when he arrived, so she immediately called an ambulance. Unfortunately, L. R. lost consciousness and was dead by the time he got to the hospital. After searching L. R’s house, investigators found a will stating that the young man’s belongings will go to his mother, brother and sister.

• Read the example of a police interview.

STEP 1

TEXT WRITING • Proposed task: Interrogation of L. R.’s lover (suspect) Task may change according to the group’s idea. Setting Police station. A police officer oversees examination of the suspect and witnesses. Characters The police officer, the suspect (L. R.’s lover), L. R.’s mother, the hunter, the housemaid who cooked the eels.

Police Officer What happened on April 30th? (the day of L. R’s death). Provide as many details as possible. Suspect I got up at eight, had a shower and had breakfast. Then, around 10, I went for a walk in the wood, which is right at the back of my house. There I ran into L. R. and invited him to have lunch at my place. My housemaid cooks fish on Wednesdays, which I know is one of L. R.’s favourite dishes. We had lunch together and he left at about 2.30 p.m. because he had a meeting.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages

Police Officer How was L. R. when he left your house? Did you notice anything unusual about him? Suspect No, nothing … He was fine. Police Officer Did you quarrel during lunch? Suspect Quarrel? Absolutely not … We had a nice lunch together. We made plans about the future … we were going to get married, you know. Police Officer Oh, I see … Where did you get the eels? Suspect I bought them at the market in the village. Police Officer Did you eat the eels? Suspect No, I didn’t. I’m a vegetarian. But the housemaid ate them and she didn’t have any problems. Police Officer You’re a vegetarian, I see … What’s the housemaid’s name? Suspect Rosemary Wellington. Police Officer What can you tell me about the rat poison we found in your garage? Suspect We live in the country, you know. Lots of mice here … so I asked the gardener to solve the problem and he bought the poison. That’s all. Police Officer Alright … Is there anything else you want to tell me? Suspect No, nothing.

• Divide into groups and investigate. Write a dialogue between the police officer and – GROUP A: L. R.’s mother – GROUP B: the hunter – GROUP C: the housemaid Remember that you may change the end of the story if you like.

AI ACTIVITY STEP 2

Ask an AI software to be one of the three characters and role-play the dialogue in English with him/her. CLASS DISCUSSION • After the questioning of the suspect and witnesses, the class draws conclusions and agrees on the final result of the investigation.

STEP 3

DIGITAL STORYTELLING • The students reproduce the interviews and/or the investigative conclusions in a digital form (audio, video, ppt presentation, etc.)

Geordie

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(around 16th century)

Ballad

T3 Geordie

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

In this Scottish ballad the protagonist is a young woman who wants to ride to the London Court of Justice to ask for her lover’s release from prison. She fails to arrive in time to try and save him, and her cry of despair ends the ballad.

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

judge • nobleman • hanged • deer • babies • lamenting The narrator overhears a woman (1) who stole sixteen of the king’s royal (3)

for her man, ‘Geordie’. He is a (2) and sold them in Bohenny. The woman

runs to London to ask the judge to spare the life of her beloved and would even give up her two (4)

and the one she is expecting to save him. The (5)

man has already been condemned to death, and will be (6)

tells her that the using a golden chain. She

ends her lament in despair. Now read the ballad and check your answers. ▲ Allston Washington, The Fight of Florimell (1819)

UNDERSTAND

As I walked out over London bridge one misty morning early I overheard a fair pretty maid was lamenting for her Geordie

“Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain, this is not the chain of many. He was born of king’s royal breed and lost to a virtuous lady.

2 Answer the questions. 1 Where is the narrator?

2 What shows that Geordie is a nobleman?

Go bridle me my milk white steed1, go bridle me my pony, I will ride to London’s court 12 to plead for the life of Geordie. Ah, my Geordie never stole nor cow nor calf, he never hurted any. Stole sixteen of the king’s royal deer 16 and he sold them in Bohenny.

1 Go...steed: Mettete le briglie al mio cavallo bianco 2 you’d spare: se lei risparmiasse

Two pretty babies have I born the third lies in my body. I’d freely part with them every one 20 if you’d spare2 the life of Geordie.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

3 What is the woman’s present condition?

Geordie The judge looked over his left shoulder, and said fair maid: “I’m sorry for thee, my pretty fair maid, you have come too late, 24 for he’s condemned already”. “Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain, this is not the chain of many. Stole sixteen of the king’s royal deer, 28 and he sold them in Bohenny.”

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Would you describe the woman as passive or determined? Why? 2 Is the narrator involved in the story he tells?

INTERPRET 4 Geordie will be executed for stealing royal deer. Is the crime in proportion to the punishment, in your opinion? WEB QUEST 5 Like other ballads, Geordie exists in many different versions. The folk singer and poet Fabrizio De André made a faithful version of the ballad, although it has a few variations. Search the web to listen to the song; what emotions does it evoke in you?

3 What is the atmosphere like? 4 Which lines are repeated? To what effect?

PDF

Your text explained

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Narrative poem

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?–1400)

LEARNING DIGITAL G eoffrey Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales PPT

Geoffrey Chaucer

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Chaucer felt that a new world was coming into being, and was particularly sensitive to the changes of 14th-century society. He saw the Black Death hit the country, participated in the Hundred Years’ War, and lived in the middle of the transition of the feudal system into something different as a result of the growth of towns and the rise of the merchant class with their guilds. An intellectual class of people with good education but not belonging to the clergy was rising, too; as son of a merchant, clerk to the king and a writer himself, Chaucer was well aware of this new reality. He was a very cultured man, familiar with foreign lands, and knew Italian and French.

1 What do these subgenres have in common? What makes them different? fabliaux short narratives in verse characterised by vulgar humour and satire, with husbands deceived by their wives, immoral clergymen, and thieves, all acting against accepted medieval moral standards (France, late 12th–14th centuries). beast fables stories with animal characters and a moral, characterised by humour and satire – ancient Greece, Aesop (620 and 564 BCE), France late 12th century Roman de Renart (Reynard the Fox).

At a time when French and Latin were the languages of culture, he decided to write in Middle English. This was a real revolution in the intellectual scenario of his time, not unlike Dante Alighieri’s decision to write his masterpiece The Divine Comedy (1308–1321) in his Tuscan dialect, which was to become the basis for the Italian language. For his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales Chaucer may have borrowed the idea of the pilgrimage from Dante, as Dante represents himself in his work as a pilgrim through the three realms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Chaucer’s works are usually divided into three periods: • In the first period (1359–72), in imitation of French literature, he translated Le Roman de la Rose, a long French love poem, which introduces the reader to medieval court behaviour in relation to courtly love. Another work was The Book of the Duchess, an elegy on the death of Blanche of Lancaster, a noble woman killed by the plague. • To the second period (1372–86), under Italian and Latin influence, belong The Parliament of Fowls where all the birds are assembled by Nature to choose their mates, and Troilus and Criseyde, strongly influenced by Boccaccio’s Filostrato, about faithless love. It is considered Chaucer’s first masterpiece for its great technical ability and psychological understanding of the

▶ Reynard the Fox disguised as a bishop preaches to a flock of birds; a woman attacks the fox with a distaff, and he runs off with a goose in his mouth. Originally published in France around 1340.

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

LIFE 1343? Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London into the rich merchant class; his father was a wine merchant and had served as an officer of the royal court.

1357 He became a page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, the first evidence of his life-long connection with the court.

1359 He was captured during a military expedition to France during the Hundred Years’ War but was quickly freed after payment from King Edward III.

1366 He married Philippa Roet, a lady in waiting to Queen Philippa (Edward III’s wife) and was recognised as an esquire, the first level of knighthood.

1372 Key fact As part of his duties as an esquire he was sent abroad on a diplomatic mission to Italy, where he got to know the works of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio.

1368 The Book of the Duchess

WORKS

1374 He was given the role of Controller of Customs in the port of London, a post that he held for the next twelve years.

1388 Chaucer survived a political purge against Richard II but was removed from all his offices and left without income.

1386 He was elected to the House of Commons.

1385?

Troilus and Criseyde

1387–1400

1389 He was given the role of Clerk of the King’s Works at Westminster. 1394 He was given a yearly pension for life.

The Canterbury Tales (unfinished)

1400 Key fact He died in London before completing his most important work, The Canterbury Tales, and was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey because of his services to the crown. p. 48

nature of human love. He also wrote The House of Fame, an unfinished allegorical work full of irony and vivid characterisation, partly indebted to Dante and Ovid, and The Legend of Good Women, nine stories about women. • In the third period (1386–1400), also called the ‘English period’ and marked by greater realism, he composed The Canterbury Tales. Writing tales was fashionable at the time, especially after the French models of the fabliaux, beast fables and romances ( p. 32), and Boccaccio’s Decameron, where Chaucer found the idea of a framework for stories. The originality of The Canterbury Tales lies in the choice of the framework – the traditional annual pilgrimage to Canterbury – which allows the poet to choose his characters from all levels of social life.

MIND MAP

changes of late 14th-century society

Geoffrey Chaucer

Middle English

three periods

French literature

Italian/Latin literature

Middle English – Realism

translation of Le Roman de la Rose – The Book of the Duchess

The Parliament of Fowls – Troilus and Criseyde – The House of Fame – The Legend of Good Women

The Canterbury Tales

CHECK OUT 1 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones. 1 Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a nobleman.

T F

2 He entered the household of the Duke of York’s wife.

T F

3 He was taken prisoner during the Hundred Years’ War and was released on payment by Edward III. T F 4 In the first of the three periods of his literary production, he wrote in imitation of the French.

T F

5 His main work is The Canterbury Tales, which he wrote in Latin.

T F

6 The framework for it was probably inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron.

T F

7 Chaucer was called the father of English poetry.

T F

8 He died in 1420 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

T F

2 Describe briefly the three periods of Chaucer’s works. 47

AUTHORS AND WORKS Narrative poem

LEARNING DIGITAL From The Canterbury Tales • DT2 The Knight • DT3 The Doctor of Medicine

PDF

The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400)

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of tales told by a group of pilgrims travelling from a London suburb to Canterbury Cathedral on a pilgrimage to visit St Thomas à Becket’s shrine. When he was writing his work Chaucer lived in Greenwich, and he may have seen all sorts of men and women pass by on their way to Canterbury, as the pilgrimage was very popular with believers. The characters are held together in temporary companionship by their condition of pilgrims, and offer a lively and faithful picture of life and culture in late 14th-century England.

IN ACTION

Structure

Which is which?

The poem is divided into two parts: • the General Prologue establishes the setting (time, place, and occasion) and draws a portrait of the pilgrims before they actually start speaking. Chaucer himself is both one of them and the narrator. The poem opens on one April day when twenty-nine pilgrims meet in Southwark (a suburb just across London Bridge) at the Tabard Inn. The host of the inn, Harry Bailly, sets up a tale-telling competition during the journey to find the best story-teller. To spend the time pleasantly each pilgrim should tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. • the pilgrims’ tales; the poem is unfinished and only 24 tales are present, some with an epilogue and/or a prologue.

1 Which group (1–5) do these pilgrims belong to? You may look up unfamiliar words to answer the question. the Dyer the Knight the Weaver the Man of Law the Prioress the Nun the Pardoner the Plowman the Wife of Bath the Miller the Merchant the Clerk the Physician the Poor Parson the Shipman the Squire the Carpenter the Tapestry-Maker the Monk the Oxford Student the Friar the Cook 1 the low nobility

The narrator The narrator Chaucer, a pilgrim himself, sets in motion the narrative of the pilgrimage. As a member of the group, he is curious, tolerant and sympathetic to almost all his companions. He tells us in a direct way what he sees and hears. His irony is mild, and he never condemns his fellow pilgrims for their defects and mistakes.

Characters In The Decameron, Boccaccio’s aristocratic ‘brigata’ of ten young nobles gathered in a palace outside Florence to keep away from the Black Death, and pass their time by telling stories. Chaucer’s pilgrims, instead, are on their way to Canterbury, and do not belong to the same class; another difference is that Boccaccio’s tales are about a specific theme per day, while the characters’ stories in The Tales reveal their different personalities. The Knight in The Decameron tells a tale of two noble knights and their love for a perfect lady, while Chaucer’s Wife of Bath tells the tale about a knight raping a young woman and going on a quest to answer the question ‘What do women want?’ and thus avoid the punishment of death for his crime.

2 the clergy 3 the middle class 4 the country folk 5 the scholars 2 Which group is the largest? Why?

▶ Some of the pilgrims to Canterbury

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

Geoffrey Chaucer The aristocrats and the lower classes are excluded from The Canterbury Tales because the high nobility would not have travelled with commoners at the time and no serf could have afforded such a trip, but the pilgrims are highly representative of the changing reality of late 14th-century England with the low nobility, the clergy, the scholars and, above all, the middle class (merchants, burghers and artisans from various guilds). The result is a gallery of characters in a constant balance between their individuality and their universal types. The characters are conventional and realistic at the same time: they are ‘types’, as their features are representative of both their social rank or profession and the literary tradition they are drawn from, but they are also real individuals, because each possesses their own personal qualities, virtues and weaknesses. The result is psychological realism and an effective narrative.

Style and language Chaucer is often called the ‘father of English poetry’; he wrote in an East-Midlands Middle English dialect spoken in London, which he enriched through French borrowings, and which became the basis for Modern English. Under the influence of continental models, Chaucer totally abandoned Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. In his earliest production, he experimented with the ‘rhyme-royal’ (a stanza made of seven iambic pentameters) while in later works such as The Legend of Good Women and The Canterbury Tales he used rhyming pair iambic pentameters, known as heroic couplets, thus establishing the iambic pentameter as the standard metre for almost all poetry to come.

The iambic pentameter: • all lines have five feet • the dominant rhythm is iambic (unstressed + stressed syllable) • lines have end-rhyme

Themes Social status and religiosity are important themes of the work. In the portraits of the pilgrims and also in the tales, Chaucer ironically shows how certain class members, especially those who belong to the Church, are corrupted by power and money, and fail to meet their duties. The only characters Chaucer looks at with admiration and no irony are the Knight, the symbol of a disappearing age ( p. 32), and the Poor Parson, who lives the life of poverty that John Wycliffe preached. Recurrent themes are also love and marriage, explored from different angles in The Tales: sensual love versus courtly love, and women’s submission to men versus their dominance in the couple. MIND MAP

pilgrims to Canterbury

narrator – irony

General Prologue

portraits of characters

The Canterbury Tales

pilgrims’ tales

psychological realism

individuals and types

Middle English

iambic pentameter

themes

social status

religiosity

love – marriage

effective narrative

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Are the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales individuals or types? 2 Who is the narrator? 3 What themes are present in the work? 4 What innovation concerning language and style did Chaucer introduce in the work?

Ideas for your map: FEUDALISM

p. 55

AUTHORS AND WORKS Narrative poem LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T4 General Prologue

The Canterbury Tales

The Prologue opens with a passage about spring, in the tradition of the French reverdie (‘regreening’, i.e. the awakening of spring). It describes this season as a moment of rebirth for all creatures and of renewed mobility for people who set off on pilgrimages. The power of faith is as restorative of the sick, as the seasonal restoration of nature is on the environment. After this, Chaucer introduces the setting of the pilgrimage and himself as a pilgrim and narrator. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

pilgrimages • journey • singing • travellers • Canterbury • spring The General Prologue opens with a description of the return of (1) showers, the flowering of plants and the (2) decide to go on (3) (4)

characterised by April

of birds. Spring is also the time when people

, and travellers from all corners of England make their journey to . The narrator – Chaucer himself – meets his twenty-nine fellow (5)

the Tabard Inn in Southwark (London), on the night before their (6)

to Canterbury.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower, When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath Exhales an air in every grove and heath Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run, And the small folk are making melody That sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages) Then people long to go on pilgrimages And palmers long to seek the strangers strands Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands, And specially, from every shire’s end Of England, down to Canterbury they wend To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick To give his help to them when they were sick. It happened in that season that one day In Southwark, at The Tabard, as I lay Ready to go on pilgrimage and start For Canterbury, most devout at heart, At night there come into that hostelry Some nine and twenty in a company Of sundry folk happening then to fall In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all That towards Canterbury meant to ride. The rooms and stables of the inn were wide; They made us easy, all was of the best. (From the Modern English version)

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

Quando in Aprile cadono le dolci piogge E penetrano la siccità di Marzo alle radici, e tutte Le vene sono impregnate di un tale liquido Da poter generare i fiori Quando anche Zeffiro con il suo dolce soffio Esala una brezza in ogni bosco e brughiera Sui teneri germogli, e il giovane sole Ha compiuto metà del suo corso nel segno dell’Ariete, Ed i piccoli uccelli cantano una melodia Che spazza via la notte ad occhi aperti (Così la natura li punge e stimola i loro cuori) Allora la gente desidera andare in pellegrinaggio Ed i palmieri desiderano andare alla ricerca dei lidi lontani Di santi venerati in vari luoghi, E soprattutto dai confini di ogni contea Dell’Inghilterra, giù verso Canterbury si dirigono Per cercare il santo beato martire, pronto A dar loro il suo aiuto quando erano malati. Accadde in questa stagione che un giorno A Southwark, alla locanda The Tabard, mentre ero Pronto per andare in pellegrinaggio e partire Per Canterbury, il più devoto nel cuore, Nella notte vennero dentro quella locanda In ventinove in un gruppo Di diverso ceto, accade allora di diventare Amici, e loro erano tutti pellegrini Che cavalcavano verso Canterbury. Le stanze e le stalle della locanda erano ampie e Ci misero a nostro agio, tutto andava per il meglio.

Geoffrey Chaucer UNDERSTAND

2 What feelings do the scenes described in lines 1–18 convey?

2 Answer the questions.

3 What changes in line 20?

1 Is Zephyrus a gentle wind? Why?/Why not?

4 Look at the first eight lines and write down the rhyming scheme. What is it?

2 Why do pilgrims visit the shrine of Thomas à Becket? 3 Are the pilgrims indifferent or friendly to one another?

INTERPRET

ANALYSE

4 Chaucer compares April with pilgrimages. In what way are they similar? Think of the role they both play.

3 Answer the questions. 1 Lines 1–18 show a growing hierarchy in the April awakening of the natural, animal, human and sacred world. Complete the table listing what/who awakes and how. Then explain how the chain of awakenings progresses. Natural

5 Discuss Chaucer’s pilgrims are a group of strangers brought together by what they are doing. What events can help people, especially the young, to come together easily and become friends?

Animal

Human

Sacred

PDF

T5 The Wife of Bath

Your text explained

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The Canterbury Tales

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

The Wife of Bath is a merchant and cloth maker from Bath, an important centre of the weaving trade in the Middle Ages. Her strong personality and arrogant behaviour make her one of the most vividly portrayed characters in the Prologue, and Chaucer also gave her the longest tale.

1 Complete the text with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

hat • horse • church • husbands • clothes The Wife of Bath wears very good (1) a large wimple, and a big (2) she goes to (4)

: many headscarves, red stockings, a pair of soft shoes, . She rides a (3)

on her way to Canterbury. When

, she pays a lot of attention to what other wives do during the service and she

frequently goes on pilgrimages. She has had five (5)

, and also lovers in her youth.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

There was a WIFE of BATH, or a near city, Who was somewhat deaf, it is a pity. At making clothes she had a skilful hand She bettered those of Ypres and of Ghent1. 5 In all the parish there was no wife to go And proceed her in offering, it is so; And if one did, indeed, so angry was she It put her out of all her charity. Her headkerchiefs were of finest weave and ground; 10 I dare swear that they weighed about ten pound Which, on a Sunday, she wore on her head. Her stockings were of the finest scarlet red,

C’era una donna proveniente da Bath o da una città vicina Che era un po’ sorda, il che è un peccato. Nella produzione di vestiti mostrava un così grande talento Che superava i tessitori di Ypres e Ghent. In tutta la parrocchia nessuna donna osava precederla Quando si dirigeva verso le offerte, E se qualcuno lo faceva, ella talmente si infuriava Da far scomparire tutta la sua carità. I suoi copricapi erano di stoffa intessuta finemente, Avrei osato giurare che pesavano buone dieci libbre, Quelli che indossava alla domenica, sulla sua testa. Le sue calze erano del rosso scarlatto più raffinato

1 Ypres and Ghent: città fiamminghe famose per la tessitura

Tightly fastened, and her shoes were soft and new. Bold was her face, and fair, and red of hue. She’d been respectable throughout her life, Married in church, husbands she had five, Not counting other company in youth; But thereof there’s no need to speak, in truth. Three times she’d travelled to Jerusalem; And many a foreign stream she’d had to stem; At Rome she’d been, and she’d been in Boulogne, In Spain at Santiago, and at Cologne2. She could tell much of wandering by the way: Gap-toothed was she, it is the truth I say. Upon a pacing horse easily she sat, Wearing a large wimple, and over all a hat As broad as is a buckler or a targe; An overskirt was tucked around her buttocks large, And her feet spurred sharply under that. In company well could she laugh and chat. The remedies of love she knew, perchance, For of that art she’d learned the old, old dance.

E sorrette da una giarrettiera, strette; le sue scarpe erano soffici e nuove. Audace era il suo viso, bello e di colorito rosso. Fu una donna rispettabile per tutta la sua vita, e per di più Sposati in chiesa, ebbe cinque mariti, Senza contare altri compagni avuti in gioventù; Ma non c’è bisogno di parlare di questo proprio ora. Tre volte era stata a Gerusalemme, Molti fiumi stranieri aveva dovuto attraversare; Era stata a Roma e anche a Bologna, A Santiago in Spagna e a Colonia, E, a questo proposito, la sapeva lunga nel vagare. Aveva denti separati uno dall’altro, a dire il vero. Disinvoltamente sedeva su un cavallo Ben avvolta da un ampio velo, e sulla sua testa un cappello Che era ampio come un brocchiero o uno scudo; Un largo mantello avvolgeva i suoi fianchi larghi E sotto ad esso i suoi piedi usavano vigorosamente gli speroni. In compagnia ella amava ridere e chiacchierare E per certo conosceva i rimedi dell’amore, Un’arte della quale aveva appreso la più antica danza.

(From the Modern English version)

▶ The Wife of Bath, detail from

the 1485 printed edition of The Canterbury Tales by William Caxton.

2 At Rome… Cologne: note mete di pellegrinaggio

UNDERSTAND 2 Complete the table with the details concerning the various aspects of the Wife’s description. Include line references. Status

Physical appearance and clothes

Pilgrimages

Attitude

Personality

3 Which details of the Wife’s appearance and life are exaggerated? 4 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones. T F

4 Her eye-catching showy clothes reveal her pride about her ability as a cloth maker and her exuberant personality.

T F

5 She is class-conscious and very proud of her wealth and status.

T F

1 When she is at Mass she is only interested in the celebration.

T F

2 She is ambiguous in her attitude to religion and faith. 3 She is not vain at all because she doesn’t care about her physical appearance. INTERPRET

5 The narrator presents the Wife as a comic character, modelled upon the tradition of the ‘stubborn impudent woman’. Where can his irony be most clearly seen? 6 Which emoji best represents the narrator’s attitude to the Wife? Tick! total approval

👍

total disapproval

👎

mild irony

😊

WEB QUEST 7 The overall image Chaucer gives of the Wife of Bath is that of a wealthy, independent, skilled, sociable and adventurous character. Is she a protofeminist character? Search the web for figures of women who successfully claimed their independence in our time. Compare the one that appeals to you the most to the Wife of Bath. PDF

From the Origins to the Middle Ages – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

ACROSS TIME Why Chaucer’s tales now? AND SPACE

Medieval collections of tales were usually of one type (Saints’ lives, beast fables, etc.), but Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales makes no difference between ‘high and low’ culture. The Knight’s romance of chivalry and courtly love ideals is followed by the Miller’s vulgar tale of adultery and sexuality.

The Knight’s tale

The Miller’s tale

Palamon and Arcite, cousins and close friends, are captured and imprisoned in a tower by their enemy Theseus, duke of Athens. They both fall in love with fair-haired Emelye, Theseus’s sister-in-law, who they see walking in the palace garden from the window of their prison. While adoring the lady from a distance they are both tormented by their love and jealousy of each other. Arcite is freed from prison thanks to the intercession of a friend of the duke’s, and leaves Athens, but he decides to return to the city in disguise for fear of losing Emelye to Palamon. Palamon escapes and the two former friends are fighting over the woman when Theseus finds them. The duke stops their fight and orders them to return in fifty days with a hundred men each to compete in a tournament, the winner of which will win Emelye’s hand in marriage. The night before, Palamon asks the goddess Venus to grant him Emelye, while Arcite asks the god Mars to win the tournament. Both obtain their wishes. Arcite defeats Palamon, but falls off his horse and is mortally wounded. Before dying, he asks Palamon to take Emelye as his bride.

John the carpenter is betrayed by his much younger and beautiful wife Alisoun; she is having an affair with Nicholas, the student who has rented a room in the couple’s house. Because they want to spend a whole night together the lovers convince John that God wants to send a flood and that they all have to sleep in three large buckets hanging from the ceiling. Instead, they spend all night in bed making love while John dumbly sleeps in the bucket so that he can cut the rope and let it float in the waters when the flood comes. Absolon, a parish clerk who has fallen in love with Alisoun, comes during the night and asks her for a kiss. Alisoun agrees but then offers him her buttocks to kiss in the dark. Angry, he comes back with a hot poker to brand Alisoun, but it is Nicholas who sticks out his buttocks this time and Absolon brands him, instead. Nicholas shouts ‘Water’ to ease the pain, John believes that the flood is coming and cuts the rope of his bucket. It crashes to the floor, and hearing all the noise the townspeople come and laugh at him.

The vitality and sexuality of Chaucer’s narrative has been modernised in freer adaptations of some of his tales today. Pier Paolo Pasolini developed this theme freely in the film I Racconti di Canterbury (1972) as part of his Trilogy of Life, preceded by The Decameron and followed by Arabian Nights. He adapted eight of Chaucer’s original tales, chosen for their erotic content. The BBC series (2003) The Canterbury Tales is a reworking of some of the tales in contemporary situations. Each of the six tales is updated to the 21st century and set along the pilgrims’ route to Canterbury. DISCUSS 1 Compare the Knight’s and Miller’s tales from Chaucer’s work. Which tale shows sensual unfaithful love and which idealised faithful love? Which is your favourite? WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to see the tale you prefer from the BBC series or from Pasolini’s film. Write a review of the episode/clip; if you choose the Miller’s or the Knight’s tale you can also add a comparison with Chaucer’s storyline.

▲ A scene from the 1972 film adaptation by Pier Paolo Pasolini I Racconti di Canterbury, starring Laura Betti as the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath married her fifth husband just after the funeral of her fourth.

▲ Poster of the BBC Series The Canterbury Tales

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share

1 FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE MIDDLE AGES KEY WORDS

1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Write a short definition for each.

YOUR THINKING SKILLS

Justify 1 Oral transmission was vital for Anglo-Saxon literature. 2 The religion of the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons was pagan. 3 Fate dominates both epics and elegies. Assess

Explain

1 British identity has been forged by multiple invasions.

1 The Norman Conquest changed the course of British history.

2 Magna Carta was a first crucial step in the path towards civic rights.

2 Alfred the Great’s efforts were paramount in the development of Anglo-Saxon literature.

3 The condition of women did not improve considerably in the Middle Ages.

3 Beowulf is an epic poem.

4 Chaucer and Langland contributed to the development of vernacular literature.

4 Feudalism was different from the societal form of the tribe. 5 Morality plays were different from Miracle/Mystery plays in many ways.

STORYTELLING

6 The Canterbury Tales reflect the changes of late medieval society.

5 Medieval drama both instructed and entertained the audience. 6 The structure of The Canterbury Tales is highly original.

3 Read the quote reporting the Vikings’ raid of Lindisfarne monastery. In this year terrible portents appeared in Northumbria, and miserably afflicted the inhabitants: these were exceptional flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air, and soon a great famine followed these signs, and after that the attacks of the Vikings miserably destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne by plunder and slaughter. (From Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 9th century)

Write the dialogue between a Lindisfarne monk and a serf working together in the fields; they look up… What do they see?

WRITING

MEDIATION

Read and listen to this short passage from Beowulf.

Mynte se mæra, þær he meahte swa, widre gewindan ond on weg þanon fleon on fen-hopu; wiste his fingra geweald on grames grapum; þæt wæs geocor sið þæt se hearm-scaþa to Heorute ateah.

Il flagello della terra bramava fuggire prendere una via tortuosa e ritrovare il suo covo nelle paludi; la stretta delle sue dita andava indebolendosi; quello fu il viaggio peggiore che quel terrore di tutti fece a Heorot.

Write your Modern English version of the passage; try and make it sound as faithful as possible to the Old English version. 5 Choose one of these areas and write a 150 word essay highlighting similarities and differences. Give evidence. • The influence of Dante and Boccaccio on Chaucer’s work • The pleasure of story-telling in moments or periods of both joy and crisis • Themes and characters in Lord Randal and Geordie 54

IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL

FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE MIDDLE AGES

• Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

invasion

religion

heroism migration

leadership

power / leadership human rights

crises / poverty religion

illusion

beauty / love

PROJECT 1 Develop your project about the idea of heroism. Step 1 Read the following description of ‘heroism’: Heroism is a social concept, and it can be explained, taught, and modelled through education and practice. I believe that heroism is common, a universal attribute of human nature and not exclusive to a few special individuals. The heroic act is extraordinary, the heroic actor is an ordinary person – until he or she becomes a heroic special individual. We may all be called upon to act heroically at some time, when opportunity arises. We would do well, as a society and as a civilization, to conceive of heroism as something within the range of possibilities for every person. Step 2 Discuss your view of heroism in groups. Are your views similar or different? Step 3 Make an oral presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view. 2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about heroism. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English Beowulf (anonymous, early 8th century)

French Song of Roland (anonymous, 11th century) Roland fights and dies heroically at Roncevalles.

Spanish The Song of My Cid (anonymous, early 13th century) El Cid fights against the Moors. German The Nibelungen Legend (anonymous, around 1200) Siegfried slains Fáfnir,the worm or dragon of Nordic mythology.

Beowulf kills the dragon.

Greek The Theogony (Hesiod, 700 BCE) Heracles kills the Hydra (the second labour).

History The Muslim knight Saladin fights off the crusaders (1187).

Art St George and the Dragon (Tintoretto, 1558) St George kills the dragon. 55

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE (1485–1660)

THE IDEA OF THE TIME

The power of illusion

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Look at the photos and answer the questions. The Royal Opera House 1 Is the stage in the open air? Where is it exactly? 2 Are there any standing seats in this theatre? 3 Would you dress up to go to this theatre? Why?/Why not? The reconstructed Globe Theatre 4 Some spectators are not sitting while watching the performance. Where are they? 5 Is a standing seat in the yard more or less comfortable than a gallery seat, especially on a cloudy rainy day? Why? 6 If this were not a performance but a live concert, where would you like to be to enjoy the show best? Why?

Which is which? 2 What is illusion? Tick all possible correct definitions. 1

something unreal that you take for real

something real that you take for unreal

something that deceives your senses

s omething you believe in though you know it is not true

s omething you dream of though you know you can’t reach it

3 Illusion can be created in many ways. Choose from among the following ways the one that most appeals to you. Explain in a few words what makes it the best illusion for you. 1

a show at the circus with a magician pretending to do something impossible

a film at the cinema with actors and actresses playing people that they are not

a play in a theatre with actors and actresses playing people that they are not

a n opera in a theatre with an orchestra and singers playing people that they are not

▲ The Royal Opera House, London The audience wait for the performance to begin in the Royal Opera House, the home of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet. The current building is the third on the site, since its construction in 1662.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping in texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors Depth-in bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ The reconstructed Globe Theatre, London The Globe, William Shakespeare’s theatre, was reconstructed in 1997 as a faithful replica of the original wooden structure open to the sky, with its small projecting stage and the three galleries.

Ideas for your map: ILLUSION

p. 121

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Key Facts The Tudors and the first Stuarts

LEARNING DIGITAL • Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy • Elizabeth I’s reign • Defeat of the Spanish Armada • James I’s Bible • The Pilgrim Fathers • Execution of Charles I during the Civil War PPT PDF

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age: History and Society

1485–1509

1509–1547

1547–1558

HENRY VII Order and stability

HENRY VIII One king, one religion

EDWARD VI and MARY I Protestantism vs Catholicism

Henry VII gave England peace after the Wars of the Roses, stabilised the country’s economy by raising new taxes and supporting the wool industry, and launched sea exploration towards the New World with John and Sebastian Cabot’s expedition in 1496.

The Anglican Reformation began as a political affair when the need for a male heir and a desire for supremacy led Henry VIII to break away from the Catholic Church. Pope Clemente VII refused to annul the king’s marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to give him a male heir, and in 1534 Henry VIII proclaimed the Act of Supremacy: he placed himself at the head of the Anglican Church, had the monastic institutions dissolved and their wealth and lands confiscated. He divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn, who gave him a daughter, Elizabeth. A male heir, Edward, only came with Jane Seymour, the third of his six wives. All subjects were required to take an oath of loyalty to the king; this implied accepting the Reformed Church of England and abjuring the Catholic faith.

Edward VI was only nine when his father died so Edward Seymour, the boy’s uncle, ruled the country. In 1549 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, adopted the Book of Common Prayer for all services in the Anglican Church. At Edward’s death in 1553 Mary I, the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, became queen; she was a Catholic determined to return England to Roman Catholicism, but her attempt was stopped by Parliament. Her persecution of Protestant churchmen reinforced anti-Catholic and anti-Papist sentiment in the country.

History narrated: The Tudors and the first Stuarts ( Digital resources, Study Booster) Royal dynasties: The Tudors Royal dynasties: The Stuarts

IN ACTION English in action 1 Find the word that collocates with each verb. 1 to raise money / taxes 2 to support a person / the industry 3 to launch a missile / an expedition 4 to annul a contract / marriage 5 to dissolve a company / monastery 6 to appoint a Member of Parliament / bishop 7 to abjure violence / your faith 8 to reinforce protection / sentiment 9 to pass an argument / act 10 to face hostility / love 11 to defeat a soldier / an army

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Key Facts

1558–1603

1603–1625

1625-1649

1649-1660

ELIZABETH I Order, expansion and self-defence

JAMES I Divine Right of kings and Puritans

CHARLES I Divine Right of kings and Civil War

THE COMMONWEALTH AND LORD CROMWELL

Elizabeth I gave the English more than forty years of internal peace and prosperity by firmly confirming the Anglican Church and its creed as a ‘middle way’, different from either the Catholic or the Protestant one. Parliament passed a Second Act of Supremacy in 1558; it again asserted the supremacy of the monarch and the union of temporal and spiritual powers in one figure. The Act of Uniformity (1559) stated that only Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer was to be used in liturgical services. The rivalry with Spain grew over the years; in 1588 Philip II sent the Spanish fleet to invade England, but the English defeated the Spanish Armada. The victory granted Elizabeth and England a period of relative peace until her death in 1603. Her successor was James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart’s son and a Protestant, who came to the throne as James I, the first Stuart King.

James I believed in the Divine Right of kings and he repeatedly dissolved Parliament. He oversaw a new English translation of the Bible (1611), King James’ Bible, or the Authorised Version, and had to face Presbyterians in Scotland and Puritans in England, who demanded a more radical form of Protestantism. The Catholics’ dissent culminated in the Gunpowder Plot on 5th November 1605, a failed attempt to blow up the King and Parliament. Facing open hostility, a group of separatist Puritans, the Pilgrim Fathers, chose exile; they left England for America on the Mayflower and founded a colony in North America, Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

Between 1625 and 1629 Charles I summoned and dissolved Parliament four times. The years from 1629 and 1640, when there was no Parliament, were known as Charles I’s Personal Rule (1629–40), or the ‘Eleven Year Tyranny’: he ruled by decree and resorted to fiscal expedients, such as extending ship money to all territories to bypass the need for Parliament’s consent to new taxes. In 1640 Charles summoned Parliament to raise taxes for his wars, and all the unresolved issues came up. A Civil War broke out (1642–49) between the Royalists, the supporters of the King, and the Parliamentarians, most of whom were Puritans. Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader, defeated the Royalist army at Preston in 1648 and in 1649, King Charles I was executed. The event shocked European powers.

The Commonwealth, a republic with a Puritan government, was established; the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church were abolished. Cromwell was named Lord Protector. The Puritans ordered the closure of all theatres in 1642 as they considered drama immoral and indecent. Cromwell died in 1658, and his son Richard was named Lord Protector but lacked the support of Parliament. The supremacy of Parliament remained clear when it invited Charles II to return to England in 1660.

Ideas for your map: POWER/RELIGION/EXPLORATION

p. 121

THE ARTS LEARNING DIGITAL The Armada Portrait: Interactive analysis

Portraits of power from past to present A true Empress of the world The Armada Portrait (1588) Unknown English artist (formerly attributed to George Gower), Woburn Abbey

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Match each detail (1–6) to what it symbolises (a–f). 1

pright posture and u open arms

imperial crown and hand on the globe

earls and gems on p Elizabeth’s dress

s uns decorating the sleeves

fine embroidery

the mermaid, the ships

a royal power b the English Empire all around the world c the Queen’s virginity and her greatness d power and generosity e England as a sea power f wealth and elegance 2 Answer the questions. 1 How different are the two small seascapes in the background? 2 Why is Elizabeth placed between them? 3 Is this portrait a convincing representation of power? Why?/Why not?

The portrait was made when Elizabeth was about 55, but there is no trace of age or illness on her face, although she had suffered from smallpox1 in her youth. It is known as ‘The Armada Portrait’ because it commemorates the English victory in 1588 against the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth I is shown as Empress of the world and commander of the seas, and the whole picture is a statement of power and authority. Her upright posture, open arms and clear gaze all speak of vitality and strength, as does the crown to her right.

1 smallpox: vaiolo 2 mermaid: sirena

The portrait is highly symbolic: • the hand on the globe and the imperial crown show Elizabeth’s power and status as an Empress; • her dress, covered with gems and pearls, a sign of virginity (as she is pure like the pearls), also shows her royal status; • on her skirt and her sleeves there are numerous suns to signify power and enlightenment; • England was a seafaring power, thus the numerous marine references from the mermaid2 covered with gold, calling the Spanish sailors to their fate (mermaids tempt sailors and then ruin them), to the ships in the background, direct references to the Armada.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

A world leader in pop clothes Mao Zedong (1972–73), series by Andy Warhol US retrospective of the artist’s work in 2018

Andy Warhol (1928–87) was an American pop-art artist whose paintings in series, among which Campbell’s Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych, have become modern icons. Warhol painted several versions of Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung), the leader of the Communist Revolution and government in China from 1949 to his death in 1976. Mao’s images were available everywhere in China and he was one of the most known politicians all over the world after the Communist Revolution in 1949. Warhol created the ten portraits that constitute the Mao series of portraits by transforming the mysterious image of a powerful political figure into a glamorised pop icon of the 1970s. THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. 1 How is Mao’s portrait replicated? 2 Are the colours realistic? Give some examples. 3 Is the aim of the replication to offend or to praise the leader, or neither of them? 4 Why do you think that Warhol replicated the same image? 5 Is this portrait a convincing representation of power? Why?/Why not?

Ideas for POWER your map: Ideas POWER map p. p. XXX 121

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL • The English Renaissance • The sonnet PPT

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

The courtier

PDF

Edmund Spenser DT4 Ye tradeful Merchants

Renaissance: a term of French origin meaning ‘rebirth’.

The English Renaissance The English Renaissance (1485–1625) was a cultural and artistic movement in England which reached its height during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). It is associated with the European Renaissance that began in Italy in the late 14th century, with its interest in the development of the individual and a flourishing of literature and of all the arts. However, visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance, as Protestantism rejected religious depictions. Instead, the loss of a ritual dimension in religiosity was compensated by the exuberant vitality of court life and drama. Reformation in England made contact with the Catholic world difficult or impossible; however, it contributed in part to the growth of New Learning, the philological study of a refined and classical Latin style, which advanced translations from Latin and Greek into the vernacular. Language development reached the phase of Early Modern English, becoming increasingly similar to todays’ English and enriching its vocabulary. William Shakespeare alone coined almost 2,000 new words and many expressions. Renaissance Humanism meant the revival of interest in classical culture and its imitation. With the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, Greek refugees brought the masterpieces of Greek literature (Plato, Homer, Sophocles) to Italy. From there, Humanism spread to other countries; its main representatives on the Continent were Erasmus von Rotterdam (1466?–1536), a Dutch philosopher and Catholic priest who prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, and Michel de Montaigne in France (1533–92). His Essays showed his scepticism after the radical transformation brought to France by the Calvinist Reformation, religious persecution and the Wars of Religion (1562–98). In England, the most influential Humanist was Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).

IN ACTION

Renaissance prose

They said of this...

A man with a conscience Robert Bolt (1924–1995, playwright and screenwriter) presented Thomas More as a man refusing to disobey not his king, but his conscience. Even Henry VIII admired his honesty and integrity in a world where ‘there is a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves’. In this extract the Duke of Norfolk and all the court have accepted Henry VIII’s second marriage to Ann Boleyn, but More refuses to. Norfolk: I’m not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly, I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names. ... You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship? More: And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me – for ‘fellowship’? (From A Man of All Seasons, Robert Bolt, 1960)

1 Answer the questions. 1 What caused Norfolk to accept the king’s will, and More to oppose it? 2 Do you think More is a good role model in today’s world? 62

In 1529 Sir Thomas More was appointed Lord High Chancellor of England; he refused to recognise Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church of England and the annulment of the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon ( p. 58). More was accused of high treason and executed in 1535. He is remembered as the author of Utopia (published in Latin in 1516); the work was translated into English in 1551 as the English language was increasingly seen as a vehicle for artistic communication. In the imaginary island of Utopia the government promotes harmony and order, and the views presented in the work are quite radical (communal property, mostly based on monastic life, the abolition of lawyers in a land of perfect justice, and gender equality, associated with a plain clothing style with no extravagant luxury). Utopia is also a satirical attack on existing European governments and was much admired by Erasmus von Rotterdam. It inspired similar satirical works in the Age of the Enlightenment, both in England and France ( p. 132), and utopian (and dystopian) fiction in the 20th century ( The Cold War Age). One of the works most popular with the aristocracy and Queen Elizabeth herself was Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) by John Lyly (c. 1554– 1606). This love story offered a new model with an enriched rhythmic prose characterised by elaborate sentences, witty plays on words and an incredible rhetorical wealth. It created a unique style known as ‘Euphuism’. The religious ferment connected with the English Reformation gave immense popularity to the translation of the Bible (1525) by William Tyndale (c. 1494–1538); he was the first to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – The English Renaissance

IN ACTION

Renaissance poetry: the sonnet

Key words

The wave of anti-Catholicism inflamed by the Anglican Reformation (Act of Supremacy, 1534 p. 58) put a stop to contact with the continent. Fortunately, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s voyages to Italy in 1526–27 had already introduced the Petrarchan sonnet into England.

2 Read the examples, and write what ‘euphuism’ means today. Look for more examples from social media or political writing. • Poor thing, her father has just passed away / kicked the bucket (= died). • The British troops were killed by friendly fire (= by their own allies, not their enemies).

The form of the Petrarchan sonnet was an octave, consisting of two quatrains with lines of eleven syllables rhyming ABBA/ABBA, or ABBA/CDCD, and a sestet consisting of two tercets CDE/CDE or CDC/DCD.

The greatest model was Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) with his sonnet collection Canzoniere, dedicated to a young lady called Laura. Following the conventions of courtly love ( p. 32) she is presented as beautiful but also cruel to her lover. He is torn between revolt and acceptance, and between his love for her and his sense of guilt for not dedicating himself to God; contrasting feelings and introspection dominate in the poems. The first phase of development of the sonnet tradition in England was of imitation as it consisted in translating Italian sonnets into English: the comparative scarcity of rhymes in the English language encouraged Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47) (whose works were published in Tottel’s Miscellany in 1557), to introduce a modified version of the original Petrarchan model: the so-called Elizabethan/Shakespearean scheme. The Elizabethan/Shakespearean scheme consisted of three quatrains and a final couplet rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and measured in iambic pentameters.

▲ Peter Lely, Portrait of a Lady (said to be Lady Diana Sidney, Spenser’s wife)

The main practitioners of the Elizabethan sonnet sequence were Edmund Spenser (1552–99), Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86) and William Shakespeare (1564–1616) ( p. 76). Probably composed in the 1580s, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella was a sonnet sequence presenting his love for Stella; it was followed by Spenser’s Amoretti (1595), dedicated to his own wife. The collections reflect the Petrarchan ideal of an angelic woman to be adored while Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which were published for the first time in 1609, brought significant innovations in themes and codified the socalled Shakespearean sonnet. MIND MAP

Renaissance

New Learning

The English Renaissance

Renaissance Humanism

Prose

Poetry – the sonnet

flourishing of literature and art

translations of literature and art

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia

Petrarchan/ Shakespearean sonnet

classical culture

Erasmus von Rotterdam

John Lyly’s Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit

translations – imitations – collections

Michel de Montaigne

CHECK OUT

William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible

‘ Euphuism’ in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit is characterised by simple diction and a search for clarity and economy.

T he Renaissance was delayed in England because the Anglican Reformation made contact with any Catholic country quite difficult and at times almost impossible.

The Petrarchan sonnet was introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt after 1527.

1 Choose all the correct statements. 1

he European Renaissance and the English Renaissance developed T simultaneously.

After the fall of Constantinople, England was the first European country to be involved in Humanism.

Sir Thomas Wyatt – Henry Howard Earl of Surrey – Edmund Spenser – Philip Sidney – William Shakespeare

he most important Humanists were Erasmus von Rotterdam, Sir T Thomas More, and Michel de Montaigne.

I n Petrarca’s Canzoniere, the woman always returns the man’s love, though in secret.

ir Thomas More’s Utopia was published in Latin in 1516 and never S translated into English.

T he Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains with various forms of alternate rhyme plus a final rhyming couplet.

Ideas for your map: LOVE

p. 121

Renaissance drama

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

LEARNING DIGITAL Renaissance drama

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each expression (1–3) to its meaning (a–c). 1

Miles Gloriosus

the three units

Machiavelian

a cunning and without scruples b a bombastic soldier and a stock type c rules concerning action (one single action), time (one day), and space (one place) regulating plays

▲ The restored Shakespeare’s

Globe Theatre on the South Bank of the River Thames in London. It holds regular summer seasons of Shakespearean plays.

Renaissance drama was the fusion of traditional and classical elements, with a mixture of tragic and comic elements in the same play, probably due to the influence of Interludes ( p. 38), short funny plays within a medieval play. Another influence came from the Moralities ( p. 38), presenting the moral conflict between good and evil. According to medieval conception, society had to mirror the divine order of the universe (the macrocosm), inside which man (the microcosm) had to respect a precise hierarchy. The need for social order and stability in imitation of divine order is essential to Elizabethan drama and its perturbance is signalled by catastrophic events in nature and agitation of the mind and spirit in human beings.

Models and genres Translations of the Classics, and of Latin authors in particular, were fundamental for Renaissance drama. Plautus influenced comedy, with the figure of the Miles Gloriosus (the bombastic soldier), misunderstandings and mistaken identities. Italian collections of stories were also often used as sources for characters and plots of comedies. Seneca, who modelled his works on ancient Greek drama modified by Stoic philosophy, influenced the development of the revenge tragedy, characterised by the revenge theme, sanguinary plots and bloody scenes, an atmosphere of horror and the presence of ghosts. The plays were also characterised by long monologues and the three unities of time, place and action. The popularity of Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469–1527) Il Principe (1532, in Italian), a political treatise about government in the hands of a Prince, further contributed to the popularity of plays displaying corruption and greed for power. Machiavelli accepts that the Prince secures his power through cruel, immoral actions. The first example of English comedy was Ralph Roister Duster around 1533, by Nicholas Udall; it combined the tradition of Greek comedies with elements of medieval drama around the figure of the bombastic soldier. However, the Golden Age of Elizabethan Drama coincided with the dramatic productions of the University Wits, playwrights who had attended university: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele from Oxford. They wrote tragedies, with the sole exception of Lyly, who dedicated himself to comedies. Their efforts produced plays full of heroism and elevated language. The first revenge tragedy was The Spanish Tragedy (1582–92) by Thomas Kyd (1558?–94?), a bloodthirsty revenge play; the Senecan ingredients of murder, the supernatural and other horrors were combined with Machiavellian ones, such as villains, intrigues and corruption. The greatest of the University Wits was Christopher Marlowe (1564–93 p. 70), whose career was interrupted by his death in a tavern fight. Unlike the other playwrights, William Shakespeare (1564–1616 p. 76) did not attend university and this caused some jealousy and criticism as he appeared on the London stage and gained the favour of both audiences and the court.

Translations and drama before Shakespeare More’s Utopia (Ciceronian Latin) 1490s

1516

Old Greek introduced at Oxford

1533 Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister

Opening of The Theatre

Seneca‘s tragedies 1559

1567

Kyd‘s The Spanish Tragedy

1576 1579

1582–92

• Ovid’s Metamorphoses Plutarch’s • Various anthologies Parallel Lives of Italian tales

Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso 1591 1588–89 Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Montaigne’s Iliad by Essays Chapman 1603 1604

1611

1615

Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata Odyssey by Chapman

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Renaissance drama

When Shakespeare started his career as a playwright in the 1590s, he had this immense repertoire of stories at his disposal from translations of the Classics, Latin, Italian, French and Greek. Il Principe by Machiavelli was widely known but never translated.

A truly national experience Drama became the truly national literary manifestation of the time. There were many factors that contributed to its incredible success with London audiences and visitors to the city: • the shape of the theatre and stage was dramatically functional. The theatre was a wooden structure, circular or octagonal in shape, with three tiers of galleries surrounding a yard, or pit, open to the sky. Most of the action took place on the roofed stage, projected into the yard, while the inner stage was for smaller scenes, and the upper stage for musicians or to represent something higher, for example a balcony. There was no scenery, and props (simple objects) symbolised a place or a role, for example a crown for a king. The audience were encouraged to use their imagination to picture what was described in the play; • the theatres were open to everybody and admission prices were relatively low. The groundlings (common people) could stand in the pit for a low price, the nobility and the richer classes could sit in the galleries and even on the stage itself; • the theatre-going habit, which can be traced back to medieval performances, was widespread because plays could be understood even by illiterate people; • the commercial potential of the theatre was great, as it was the place of entertainment for all classes; • a new interest in classical drama had been introduced by Humanism; • there were a great number of talented playwrights; • the theatre was patronised by the court and the aristocracy; the monarch or a nobleman chose a company of actors and put them under their protection (i.e. The Kings’ Men or The Admiral’s Men); • the language was rhetorically powerful and full of imagery; both educated and illiterate audiences appreciated it in an age dominated by the love for speeches, sermons and the spoken word. IN ACTION Look and think

The public playhouse

2 Match each part of the theatre (1–6) to its description (a–f). a

t he projecting stage, with three sides close to the audience

t he pit or yard, the area closest to the stage, where common people could stand for a low price

t he galleries, where the nobility and the wealthier classes sat on benches

t he balcony, used for example in Romeo and Juliet

t he inner stage, used for the sudden revelation of a scene

t he trap-door leading to the cellar under the stage

5 3

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

IN ACTION

Public and private theatres Permanent Elizabethan playhouses were of two types, ‘public’ and ‘private’. Public theatres were large outdoor playhouses, with companies of professional actors, whereas private theatres were smaller and indoors, with companies of boys. In 1576 the popularity of performances convinced the actor and carpenter James Burbage to build The Theatre, the first public playhouse outside the walls of the city of London, on the South Bank of the Thames, in the Southwark area. An act of 1572 had classed actors as vagabonds; to avoid this accusation a company was formally under the protectorate of a noble person, and public theatres were usually built in the Southwark area to escape the control of the civic authority. However, censorship by the Master of Revels was rather strict. Theatre building proved such a profitable activity that Burbage’s Theatre was followed by many others; the most famous were The Curtain (1577), The Swan (1595) and The Globe (1598), each associated with a company of actors. One of the most popular companies was Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later to become the King’s Men in 1603 under James I. This distinction between public and private theatres disappeared in about 1609 when the King’s Men, in residence in summer at the public playhouse The Globe began using The Blackfriars, a private theatre, in winter. The capacity of public and private playhouses differed, from 3,000 spectators at The Swan to 700 spectators at The Blackfriars.

They said of this...

Actors and audience

3 In the film Shakespeare in Love (1998) the director imagines that Richard Burbage lends his theatre, The Curtain, to Shakespeare’s company so that they can stage a new play, Romeo and Juliet. Although his words are fictional, they are truthful about drama in his time. Find evidence and explain why.

Women were not allowed to perform on stage, and they were replaced by boy actors. Actors were usually very well-trained professionals, able to play more than one role, since their companies were small in size. They were also skilled in dancing and fencing. The clowns had been the great headliners of the Elizabethan stage before the late 1580s, but then there was the rise of the tragedians, such as Edward (Ned) Alleyn and Richard Burbage. Every company had a top clown along with the tragedian; Shakespeare’s company had two of the most popular clowns of the time, first William Kempe and then Robert Armin. Some actors were able to become shareholders in their respective companies and make a good living.

Richard Burbage: The Master of the Revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast. But my father, James Burbage, had the first license to make a company of players from Her Majesty, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare has a play. I have a theatre. The Curtain is yours. Web quest 4 Search the web for scenes from the film Shakespeare in Love that represent the reality of Renaissance London, with its people, Elizabeth I, the Puritans, the plague and the public theatres. Which clip is most faithful? Why?

▲ Scene from the film Shakespeare in Love (1998)

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Renaissance drama

IN ACTION English in action 5 Choose the correct alternative. 1 censorship = suppressing / advancing a form of art by force or law

The costumes were wonderful and expensive 16th-century clothes. Performances usually began at two o’clock in the afternoon and lasted for just over two hours, and the tickets had different prices. As had happened with medieval drama, theatre-going remained an intense communal experience shared by all classes, from the nobility to members of the lower classes. Plays were fun, whatever their genre, and comic scenes, music and dance were much appreciated. All social classes attended the performances and the audience would shout, clap and comment aloud during the performances.

2 fencing = a real / pretended fight with swords 3 headliner = a top / minor performer in a show 4 shareholder = somebody who regulates / owns shares in a company

models

Latin: Plautus and Seneca

MIND MAP

first comedy: Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister

Italian collection of stories

Renaissance drama

first revenge tragedy: Thomas Kid’s The Spanish Tragedy

University Wits

William Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe

Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe

theatre and stage structure

popularity of drama

public vs private theatres

public playhouses

communal experience

patronage for companies

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

6 Public theatres on the South Bank of the Thames escaped the control of the civic authority and censorship.

T F

2 Who were the most influential Latin dramatists, and which aspects of their works served as models for Renaissance drama?

7 Actors in public theatres were non-professional, and their companies were usually very large, with at least one woman to play female roles.

T F

3 How important was Machiavelli’s Il Principe in Renaissance drama?

8 Performances were held in the open at night.

T F

4 Can you put the most important facts about drama before Shakespeare in chronological order?

9 The clowns of the time, such as William Kempe and Robert Armin, were highly respected.

T F

1 How did medieval plays influence the development of Renaissance drama?

2 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones.

IELTS

1 Plautus and Seneca were the two most important models for renaissance drama.

T F

2 Playhouses were of two types, public and private.

T F

Freedom for art

3 Not many people from the lower classes attended the theatres, as plays were rich in classical references and difficult to understand.

T F

4 Patronage by the court and the influence of classical drama helped dramatists to develop their art.

Some people think that theatres should be subsidised by the government, others believe that they should be independent commercial enterprises.

T F

5 The most important public theatres, The Theatre, The Swan, The Curtain and The Globe were built between 1578 and 1598. T F

3 WRITE about the following topic.

Discuss both sides and give your opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge. Write at least 150 words.

Ideas for your map: ILLUSION

p. 121

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

LEARNING DIGITAL T he Jacobean and Puritan Age

IN ACTION Web quest/Key words 1 Search the web for examples of ‘deduction’, ‘induction’, ‘reasoning’ and ‘observation’ in science. Then choose the correct pair of opposites. 1

deduction vs reasoning

deduction vs induction

deduction vs observation

reasoning vs observation

The Jacobean and Puritan Age During the autocratic reign of James I ( p. 59), the stability and self-confidence of the Elizabethan period were replaced by uncertainty and mistrust, which were reflected in the literature of the time. Another factor that contributed to this change was the scientific revolution and method.

The scientific revolution In the well-enclosed Ptolemaic universe, permanence had reigned; all the planets and stars had fixed places and the Earth was at the centre of the universe. New scientific discoveries questioned these traditional medieval beliefs; Copernicus (1473–1543) argued that it was the Sun not the Earth which was the centre of the universe, and the studies of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) confirmed it. So this reassuring and familiar view was replaced by an unfamiliar universe marked by corruption and mutability; uncertainty was in turn responsible for a sense of pessimism. The Aristotelian method of investigation of nature, which was based on deduction and reasoning, was also questioned, in favour of induction and observation. A new philosophical current called Empiricism, according to which you can know only what you can learn through your senses and experience, was initiated by Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Bacon first described the experimental method in his seminal work Novum Organum (1620): There remains simple experience; which, if taken as it comes, is called accident, if sought for, experiment. The true method of experience first lights the candle [hypothesis], and then by means of the candle shows the way [arranges and delimits the experiment]; commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it deducing axioms [theories], and from established axioms again new experiments.

In his Anatomy of the World (1611) John Donne, one of the main poets of the Metaphysical school, provides a very good picture of this feeling of dislocation and uncertainty: And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out, The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit Can well direct him where to look for it. […] ‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

Jacobean drama

Tragedies in the Jacobean Age were dominated by an obsession with violent stories of revenge and moral corruption (represented by incest, perversion, lust and ambition), and with a preference for the Machiavellian villain. The passion of James I and his wife Anne for musical drama encouraged the rise of masques, plays with music and elaborate costumes and sets, where women were occasionally allowed to perform, and which featured mythological characters. The writer who most fully exploited the genre was Ben Jonson (1572–1637). The high costs of these shows, however, alienated the middle classes and the Puritans with the prospect of waste and self-indulgent excess. A gap opened between court and public taste; audience numbers decreased, and the companies started favouring private rather than public playhouses.

Jacobean poetry: the Metaphysical poets ▲ Scenography of the Ptolemaic (A)

and the Copernican (B) world systems

The Metaphysical poets best represented the sense of unease and anxiety that characterised the Jacobean Age. John Donne (1572–1631 p. 116) is the main representative of this school, which also had followers during the last part of the century.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – The Jacobean and Puritan Age

The poems of the Metaphysical school are different from Spenser’s or Sidney’s unhurried ornamentation in verse, but not dissimilar from Shakespeare’s art in both his sonnets and plays. They display intellectual ingenuity – ‘wit’ – as the way to evoke emotions through ‘conceits’. These are unconventional and unexpected metaphors often presented as oxymorons, paradoxes or puns and drawn from all fields of knowledge: astronomy, politics, astrology and religion. The ideas and things in the metaphor seem to have no connection at first but once readers perceive them, new facets of reality are revealed. Most poems are conversational in tone and language, often ironic, and begin abruptly. Persuasion is a major feature of most Metaphysical poems; in his dramatic monologue the poet tries to convince his silent listener (the beloved, death or God) of a point that the various conceits repeatedly explore. Conceits are often interlocked, one developing into the next one and then reappearing to explore a new aspect.

IN ACTION They said of this...

T.S. Eliot on the Metaphisical school A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

Literature in the Puritan Age The Puritans demanded more simplicity among the clergy, and the abolition of traditional rituals which they still considered too close to Roman Catholicism. They declared war on sin and rejected any sort of entertainment. They loved work for work’s sake, and considered material success a sign of God’s grace. Actors, who did not work and only acted, were immoral and their art licentious; all theatre was to be abolished and, in 1642, during the Puritan revolution ( p. 59) theatres were closed. John Milton (1608–74), a Puritan supporter during the English Civil War, best expressed the spirit of the Puritan Age; he added to his immense classical culture and love of beauty the strong moral earnestness of the Puritans and gave England its first Christian epic, Paradise Lost (1667). The poem presents the events of the Genesis with the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan in a grand style full of Latinisms, long periphrasis and a complex syntax. Milton’s style deeply influenced the poets of the Augustan Age.

(From The Metaphysical Poets, 1921)

2 Answer the questions. 1 What makes a thought an experience for the Metaphysical poet? 2 Are there any thoughts that are ‘an experience’ to you?

MIND MAP

uncertainty and mistrust

MIND MAP

The Jacobean Age

scientific revolution

Metaphisical poetry

The Puritan Age

closure of theatres

new methods and vision of universe

wit and conceits

Empiricism – Sir Francis Bacon

conversational and persuasive

John Milton

first Christian epic – Paradise Lost

CHECK OUT 1 Match the ideas and genres (1–4) to their authors (a–d). 1

Scientific revolution

a John Donne (1572–1631)

Empiricism

b Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Metaphysical poetry

c John Milton (1608–1674)

Christian epic poem

d Copernicus (1473–1543), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)

2 Match each sentence (1–6) to its correct half (a–f). 1

The two most popular dramatic genres of

a for work’s sake and despised art as illusory.

Metaphysical poems used

b conceits to persuade the listener of one point.

The Puritans loved work

c Milton’s classical culture with the strong moral earnestness of the Puritans.

The theatres were

d the Jacobean Age were the revenge tragedy and the masque.

John Milton was a

e closed during the Puritan revolution.

Paradise Lost combines

f Puritan supporter during the English Civil War.

Ideas for your map: POETRY

p. 121

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

LEARNING DIGITAL

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

C hristopher Marlowe and Doctor Faustus

Profile Christopher Marlowe, the first great dramatist of the Elizabethan Age, was repeatedly accused of both immorality and atheism, and also believed to be a Roman Catholic. He was a refined scholar and a keen observer and interpreter of his own time, very familiar with court intrigues, the evil and suffering of the human soul. He was the outstanding figure among the University Wits, the group of dramatists with a university background popular in London theatres. His reputation as a great playwright was due to his successful use of blank verse, and to his experimentation with a new type of tragedy which focused on only one great character, doomed to inevitable failure. Although many of his plays have elements of Morality plays ( p. 39), like the spiritual conflict in the protagonist and the good and bad angels in Doctor Faustus, his protagonists are Renaissance overreachers. In Tamburlaine the Great, a shepherd rises to the status of emperor, thanks to his unlimited ambition and ferocious brutality, while The Jew of Malta, set in Malta, presents Barabas, a Jew, involved in murderous plots and, at the end, burnt alive.

Themes The themes of Marlowe’s plays reflect the transition from the Medieval to the Renaissance world: the thirst for power, the rebellion against institutions, the aspiration to surpass all human limitations, and unlimited ambition unrestricted by any sense of morality. Ambition is also connected with the search for perfect beauty. His tragic heroes have powerful personalities and are dominated by one ambition (political greatness, unlimited knowledge or immense wealth) that rules all their lives. The final result is tragic; not only is the tragic hero doomed to failure because of his moral flaw, a fatal imperfection in character, but he is also defeated by a final sense of utter loneliness.

Language and style Marlowe gave form and unity to drama, following a logical trend from the initial search for power to the climax of ambition and in the end ultimate destruction. His language is over-luxuriant and rich in hyperbole. Before Marlowe, plays used strictly rhymed verse. Finding it too rigid and formal, he used blank verse and alternated stresses to a more varied verse. His style influenced Shakespeare, who exploited the natural rhythm that blank verse lends to drama. IN ACTION Key words 1 Hundreds of years after Marlowe’s overreachers, psychology tries to understand ambition, a fundamental human drive. Which of the two definitions best defines Marlowe’s characters? 1 healthy ambition the measured desire of achievement or distinction, individually enabling and socially constructive. 2 unhealthy ambition the immoderate or disordered desire of achievement or distinction, individually inhibiting and socially destructive – similar to greed. 70

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

▲ Nelson Mandela

Hitler. ▲ Adolph Hitler

LIFE 1564 Marlowe was born into a family of humble origin.

1580 He studied at Canterbury and then at Cambridge. While at university he wrote a play and had it performed.

1584 He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree.

1587 KEY FACT He was in London, writing for the theatre with the Lord Admiral’s Company, and probably also employed in government service as a secret agent for the Queen.

1586–87

WORKS

1588–89 Doctor Faustus p. 71

Tamburlaine the Great

MIND MAP

1592 He was arrested in the Netherlands. He was imprisoned other times for assault and street fights.

1590

1593 He was stabbed to death in a tavern of a London suburb in unclear circumstances. It is widely believed that Marlowe’s death was ‘planned’ for political reasons.

1592

The Jew of Malta

Edward II

Christopher Marlowe

turbulent short life

University Wit

Renaissance overreachers

first great dramatist

rebellion and ambition

blank verse

over-luxuriant language

CHECK OUT 1 Choose all the correct statements. 1 2 3

hristopher Marlowe had a quiet, peaceful life, and was unjustly C accused of atheism and immorality.

is tragedies in blank verse are a study of ambitious characters H all doomed to a tragic end.

2 Answer the questions.

I n 1593, he was stabbed to death in a tavern in a London suburb in unclear circumstances.

1 What multiple roles have been suggested for Marlowe?

e was a member of the University Wits, the group of dramatists H with a university background popular in London theatres.

3 What was Marlowe’s reputation based on?

2 What themes characterise Marlowe’s dramatic production? 4 How innovative was his style?

Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–89) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, his most popular play, deals with power through knowledge. The plot was taken from the real history of Johannes Georg Faustus, a German necromancer whose biography was first published in 1587. It was later translated into English under the title of The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus.

THE PLOT Doctor Faustus, a respected German scholar, is bored with logic, medicine, law, and religion. His friends, Valdes and Cornelius, teach him magic, which he uses to summon a devil named Mephistophilis. After consulting with Lucifer, Mephistophilis returns to Faustus with a contract for his soul in exchange for Faustus having 24 years of absolute knowledge, which Faustus signs in his own blood. Later,

Faustus asks Mephistophilis many questions but Mephistophilis and Lucifer bring in the Seven Deadly Sins to dance for Faustus and so distract him. As the end of his contract approaches, Faustus fears his imminent death; Mephistophilis calls up Helen of Troy for him. On the final night of his life, devils claim Faustus’ soul. The next morning, his colleagues find his body torn into pieces.

Ideas for your map: AMBITION

p. 121

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

Characters • Doctor Faustus Marlowe transformed the simple necromancer and wizard of the original source into the much more complex figure of a distinguished scholar and theologian. He is tired of both the theology and the science of his time, so he turns to magic. He thirsts for knowledge as knowledge is power for him; to obtain it, he sells his soul to the devil in return for twenty-four years of pleasure and supernatural knowledge. His desires echo the spirit of adventure and quest of Renaissance explorers, but to obtain this knowledge he does not hesitate to make a pact with Lucifer. Throughout his life, Faustus has to face inner conflicts, split between curiosity and conscience, the sacred and the profane, earthly pleasures and elevation through study. Death is his final destiny, and he loses his soul.

• Mephistophilis Although Mephistophilis is a servant of evil, Marlowe has given him a more convincing characterisation than simply that of the villain. He has feelings, even an occasional impulse for good, and still suffers because he has lost God.

• Allegorical characters Faustus’ inner conflict between his desire for salvation and thirst for unholy knowledge is represented in the allegorical characters of the Good Angel and the Evil Angel; they are counsellors offering advice and warnings when Faustus doubts his choice.

Themes • Knowledge over wisdom Faustus’ desire to push the limits of human knowledge is without guiding wisdom; he learns many things but can’t use this knowledge wisely. The lack of wisdom in Faustus’ path is shown first of all by his pact with the devil, which damns him forever, and by his mean-spirited pranks, i.e. practical jokes, and tricks to gain fame and money. This is all he gets from the dark knowledge he is accorded by Mephistophilis.

• Pride and damnation Faustus’ pride makes him despise even the most admired authorities of the past, such as Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of Ancient Greece, Galen, a philosopher and physician whose influence dominated medical theory and practice until the 17th century, and Justinian, whose Code (530 BCE) was the basis for regular legal Codes in Western Europe. Like Lucifer, the fallen angel who rebelled against God, Faustus’ great sin is pride, which leads him first to reject God and to sign his pact with the devil, then to commit many additional sins, and, in the end, to damn himself with no chance of redemption. His damnation is the result not just of his pact, but of his refusal to repent of his sins. He never feels real remorse and sadness for his sins; he gives up magic with a final, desperate cry, ‘I’ll burn my books!‘ when it is already too late. The clock has struck midnight and the devils are already dragging him away. MIND MAP

power through knowledge

Doctor Faustus

pact with the devil

inner conflict

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who are the main characters of Doctor Faustus? 72

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

2 What themes are present in the play?

final damnation

Christopher Marlowe

T6 Faustus’ last hour

Doctor Faustus

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Doctor Faustus’ final soliloquy takes place during his last hour of life before he is carried off to spend eternity in Hell. During his life he has turned down every opportunity to repent of his sins; he should call for God’s mercy, but he still implores Lucifer, instead.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

burn • meaningless • midnight • rapidly • despair Faustus spends his last hour between (1) him. His wishes are all (2) passes (3)

and fear, waiting for the devils to come and take as none of them can come true; as he speaks to himself, time

and half an hour is gone. He keeps repeating what he knows cannot be done

any longer, and still clings to the Devil and his magic. Only when (4) that he will (5)

has struck he cries

his books but it is too late, and he is dragged into Hell.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

The clock strikes eleven. Faustus Ah Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually. 5 Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease and midnight never come. Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day. Or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, 10 That Faustus may repent and save his soul. O lente, lente, currite noctis equi. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike. The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I’ll leap up to my God: who pulls me down? 15 See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament. One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ! Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! Yet will I call on him. Oh, spare me, Lucifer! Where is it now? ’Tis gone: 20 And see where God stretcheth out his arm, And bends his ireful brows. Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God. No, no. Then will I headlong run into the earth. 25 Earth, gape! Oh no, it will not harbour me. You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud,

L’orologio batte le undici. Faust Ah Faust! Non hai che un’ora misera di vita e poi sarai dannato, eternamente! Oh fermatevi, voi sfere del cielo che senza pace andate, affinché il tempo possa finire, e mai venir la mezzanotte; o pupilla della lieta Natura, sorgi dunque o Sole, sorgi ancora, e fa’ che resti un giorno eterno; o fai tu che quest’ora sia un anno, un mese, sia una settimana o un giorno solo, ch’io mi penta e salvi! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi! Ma le stelle si muovono, ed il tempo corre, quell’ora presto suonerà, verrà il demonio, e Faust sarà dannato. Oh mi solleverò fino al mio Dio! Chi mi trascina giù? Oh guarda, il sangue di Cristo scorre e inonda il firmamento! Ed una sola goccia mi potrebbe salvare. Ah Cristo! Non straziarmi il cuore se imploro Cristo mio! Lo chiamo ancora! Risparmiami, Lucifero! E dov’è ora il demonio, dove? Ecco è sparito! E vedi come Dio stende le braccia e aggrotta quelle sue ciglia adirate! Montagne e rocce, venite, venite, piombatemi sul capo, nascondetemi dalla tremenda collera di Dio! No, no! Io cercherò di subissarmi a capofitto nella terra: O terra apriti! Oh no, non mi darà riparo! Stelle che brillavate alla mia nascita e che mi avete dato questa morte e questa dannazione, or sollevate voi Faust in alto come densa nebbia nel grembo a quelle nubi tempestose,

That when you vomit forth into the air My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven

The watch strikes.

The clock strikes twelve. 55

Thunder and lightning.

Thunder. Enter the Devils.

Exeunt with him.

O Dio, se dell’anima mia pietà non senti, per Cristo almeno, che m’avea redento col sangue suo, disponi all’incessante angoscia qualche fine; sia dannato mille anni, centomila, e poi mi salvi! Oh, non è posto limite ai dannati! Perché non fosti tu una creatura senz’anima? O perché sarà immortale questa che hai? Ah tu, metempsicòsi pitagorèa, se tu fossi vera quest’anima da me s’involerebbe ed io potrei mutarmi in qualche bruto animale! Felici, gli animali tutti! Perché, se muoiono, l’anime loro presto si dissolvono negli elementi; ma la mia vivrà per essere cruciata eternamente. Maledetti coloro che mi fecero! No, Faust, tu devi maledir te stesso, maledire Lucifero, tu devi, che ti privò del dolce paradiso.

Oh, suona! Suona! Corpo ora dissolviti in aria, o vivo ti trarrà in inferno Lucifero!

E tu cangiati in minute gocciole, anima mia, e giù precipita nell’oceano, che mai non ti si trovi!

Mio Dio, mio Dio, oh non guardare tanto feroce su di me! Serpenti e vipere lasciate ch’io respiri ancora un poco almeno! Inferno orrendo, non spalancarti! Non venir, Lucifero! Io brucerò i miei libri! Ah Mefistofele! Escono i Demòni con Faust.

(From V, II, ll. 143-200)

tutta, ben presto!

Tuono. Entrano i Demòni.

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me. Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile. Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books. Ah, Mephostophilis!

Ah, mezz’ora è passata! E passerà

Tuono e lampo.

Oh soul, be changed into little water drops And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found.

ma la mia anima possa ascendere nel cielo!

Suona mezzanotte.

Oh, it strikes, it strikes! Now body turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.

possan le mie membra uscire dalle fumose bocche,

Suona l’orologio.

Ah! half the hour is past, Twill all be past anon. Oh God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet, for Christ’s sake, whose blood hath ransomed me, Impose some end to my incessant pain. Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be saved. Oh, no end is limited to damned souls. Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? Or why is this immortal that thou hast? Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true This soul should fly from me, and I be changed Unto some brutish beast. All beasts are happy, for when they die Their souls are soon dissolved in elements, But mine must live still to be plagued in hell. Cursed be the parents that engendered me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer, That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

35 40 45 50

che quando giù vomiterete poi nell’aria,

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

(Traduzione di Nemi D’agostino)

Christopher Marlowe UNDERSTAND

ANALYSE

2 Put the sentences that describe Faustus’ fears and wishes into the correct order. He calls for Lucifer to spare him. He wishes that the earth would cover him. He wishes that the sun would rise again. He gives up asking for more time. He pleads to the devil not to harm him for naming Christ. He wishes he had never been born. He wishes his body could be turned to air or water. He wishes that his suffering in Hell could have a limit. He wishes that he were an animal with no soul to damn. He wishes that his last hour could be stretched out. e fears that God is angry with him and concludes that God H won’t forgive him. He wishes that midnight would never come. He curses his parents, but then curses himself and Lucifer. 3 Answer the questions. 1 Who keeps Faustus company in his last hour? 2 What are Faustus’ last words? 3 Who arrives to drag Faustus to Hell? Do they come before or after Faustus’ last words?

4 Answer the questions. 1 Consider Faustus’ last words. What ambition has caused his damnation? 2 How does Faustus feel as he perceives the inexorable passing of time? Choose all the correct options. anguished hopeful desperate confident miserable panic-stricken 3 How does Faustus see damnation, the devil and God? 4 Repentance consists of giving up the path of evil and asking for God’s forgiveness. Does Faustus repent or not? Give evidence. 5 What advantage does Faustus gain from all his knowledge and erudition now, in his last hour? 6 Faustus speaks to himself using his own name, and also addresses himself using different pronouns (thou/thee, ‘you’ – I/me). To what effect? 7 Blank verse consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters. Listen to the recording of the soliloquy again; is this blank verse? INTERPRET 5 Faustus’ inability to repent of his sins is psychologically convincing; having served Lucifer for so long, he has reached a point at which he cannot imagine breaking free. He can’t repent. Can you think of situations when one ‘sells his soul to the devil’ in an obsession that cannot be cured and is selfdeluding? PDF

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Another Faust (2009) by Daniel & Dina Nayeri Originally from Iran, Daniel and Dina Nayeri were just children when they left the country with their family as refugees and fled to the US. Daniel has always had jobs around books including secondhand bookshop sales assistant, children’s librarian, even bookshelf maker. He is now a writer and editor in New York City and also a professional pastry chef. Dina graduated from Harvard and Princeton Universities and is an essayist, novelist and short story writer.

Marlowe and Goethe’s myth in the 21st century Another Faust tells about five children mysteriously vanishing from their families in Europe and reappearing five years later at one of the best New York prep schools, where they make incredible progress thanks to their strange, special gifts. But nothing in life is free and that’s what the five teenage protagonists will find out for themselves when they realise what they have traded for those gifts.

“

I f you enjoy books that are food for thought and deal with moral issues like the drawbacks of greed and ambition, then this is the right novel for you. I loved how the authors hinted at the Faustian deal and how the old myth perfectly fit into the storyline, making it more fun and enjoyable for a YA reader like me.

“

In this life, you have winners and losers. The more you win, the higher you go.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Amanda’s review of the book, then answer the questions. 1 Is there anything you want so badly that you’d do whatever it takes to get it? 2 What kind of goals do today’s teenagers set themselves? 3 What would you ask for if you could make one wish come true?

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. 75

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance poetry and drama

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

LEARNING DIGITAL W illiam Shakespeare and the Globe PPT

William Shakespeare

IN ACTION

Profile

Across time and space

So little is known about Shakespeare that he remains a real man of mystery, and doubts have been raised concerning his identity and even his existence. It has been suggested that the 38 plays attributed to him were written by other writers who had the erudition, typical of university education, demonstrated in his plays. There has been much speculation about his private life, education and beliefs. Unlike the University Wits, a group of popular Elizabethan dramatists, he never attended university. He was made fun of by Thomas Nashe, a playwright who had been to university, for having mastered only ‘little Latin and less Greek‘. Shakespeare was almost certainly educated at Stratford’s Grammar school, King’s New School, not very far from his parents’ home; given the position of his father as a public official, Shakespeare would have qualified for free education there. There he was taught reading, writing and provided with excellent expertise in Latin literature and, most importantly, rhetoric. Shakespeare’s plays give no evidence for establishing anything certain about his religious beliefs. He was born in a world where Catholicism had been de facto abolished with the Anglican Reformation of Henry VIII in 1534 ( p. 58), but the Reformed Church became more openly Protestant in rituals only with James I, and the distinction between the High and Low Churches (respectively more Catholic and more Protestant-oriented) survived Shakespeare himself. He was certainly a dramatist and poet, and his career extended over both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean Age. His plays have been translated into many different languages and are performed all over the world; his sonnets have established the standard for the Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet. His works reveal what is apparently an unlimited knowledge of the world, also beyond the borders of the British Isles, but despite the lack of information concerning ‘the Lost Years’, it is universally believed that he never visited Italy or any other parts of Europe, or the New World. This and the enormous richness and depth of his language have contributed to his legend as a universal genius. His immense popularity over time has attracted both enthusiastic admiration and severe criticism; for Voltaire, a philosopher of the 17th-century French Enlightenment and a defender of Neoclassicism ( p. 132), Shakespeare’s plays broke all rules of classical decorum and the three unities of time, space and action, while for the 19th-century English Romantics ( p. 178) he was the Bard, a spontaneous genius that could talk to the heart of man with works of universal value. Most certainly he was a man of his time; his work is permeated by the ideas and beliefs of his age, with deep changes brought about not only by the Renaissance’s new Humanism but also by the new scientific discoveries ( p. 68) and the discovery of the New World. But the most striking characteristic is that he was a man of the theatre; actor, playwright and shareholder, both a man of business and of erudition, at the same time following and directing the taste of his heterogeneous public.

Shall I go to school, Father? This is what a typical Tudor reformed Grammar school was like: • students: 7–15-year-old boys from the wealthier middle classes • language of teaching: Latin only • School books: - Lily’s Latin Grammar (1540) - The Bible - The Book of Common Prayer • Curriculum: Latin and a bit of Greek literature, rhetoric • Further study: university, either Oxford or Cambridge, or the Inns of Court (law studies) • Educational techniques: - ‘double translation’; from Latin into English, and then back into Latin - study and imitation of models of discourse (imitatio) • School time: 7 am – 5 pm, with just one hour break 1 Answer the questions. 1 How different was Shakespeare’s school from yours? 2 What would young William and one of his classmates say on their way to school on a cold winter day? Write their dialogue, and act it out for the class.

▲ Shakespeare’s school in Stratford-upon-Avon

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1564, 23rd April (?) William Shakespeare was born in Stratfordupon-Avon, a market town located about 100 miles northwest of London, the third child of John Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden, of a good country family. Legend says that he was born on St George’s day, patron saint of England.

1578 He married Anne Hathaway, aged 26, with whom he had three children.

1583 Susanna, his first child, was born.

1585 Twins Hamnet and Judith were born and baptised in Stratford. Hamnet died of unknown causes at age 11.

1585–92 ‘The Lost Years’: it is not known when Shakespeare left Stratford, or what he did.

MIND MAP

dramatist and poet

man of his time and of the theatre

1592 KEY FACT He worked in London as an actor and playwright, and became a shareholder in a theatre company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the most important company of his time.

1603 The company became known as the King’s Men when James I came to the throne.

1597 Shakespeare had already written 15 of his 38 plays, and bought the best house in Stratford, called New House, for his family.

1599 KEY FACT The King’s Men managed to build their own playhouse, The Globe, on the South Bank of the River Thames.

1613 Shakespeare is thought to have retired to Stratfordupon-Avon.

1616, 23rd April (?) He died in Stratford. Seven years after his death, some of his friends and fellow actors published an edition of thirty-six of the plays in the First Folio.

William Shakespeare

man of mystery

personal beliefs and much of his life not known

no university education

Grammar school

wide knowledge of the world

admiration vs criticism

Latin literature – rhetoric

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the text with the given words.

2 Answer the questions.

retired • admired • coincide • educated • unknown • knowledge • renamed • legend • theatre • breaking • playwright • left

2 What opposing views are there of the playwright? 3 Which aspects of his time are reflected in his works?

William Shakespeare’s life According to (1)

1 Why is Shakespeare a man of mystery?

, William Shakespeare’s birth

and death dates (2)

: 23rd April 1564 and 1616

respectively. He was most probably (3)

at the local

Grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, although he never attended university. The reason why he left for London after his marriage with Anne Hathaway and the birth of his three children, Susanna and the twins, Hamnet and Judith, are (4)

. In London,

Shakespeare worked as an actor and (5)

; he was a

member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, (6) the King’s Men in 1603. He is thought to have (7) to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613, where he died three years later. He has been criticised for (8)

the unities but

(9)

for his genius. His works reveal an impressive

(10)

of the world and man, even though it is almost

certain that he never (11) a man of the (12) the taste of his public.

England. He was first of all , capable of following and directing ▲ Shakespeare’s birthday parade in Stratford-upon-Avon

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance poetry

Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609)

LEARNING DIGITAL

Between the years 1592 and 1598 the theatres were closed because of the plague, and Shakespeare dedicated himself to poetry. He wrote two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1592–93) and The Rape of Lucrece (1593), both dedicated to his patron, the Earl of Southampton) and a collection of 154 sonnets. It is not known for sure whether he supervised the publication of his sonnets in 1609, and therefore their final sequencing may have not be decided by the author. The sonnet was considered an exercise in poetic art, able to show the author’s mastery of pattern, rhymes and imagery; it is likely that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets to show his poetic ability in dealing with the many facets of the experience of love, although some heartfelt emotions may have been the basis for the poems. The sonnets present the themes of courtly love ( p. 32), such as the anguish of absence and disillusionment, praise of the beloved, originally revisited in imagery and tone, and they also develop such themes as time, decay, and poetry itself. His mastery in the use of the sonnet and impressively original treatment of the theme of love contributed not only to the popularity of the collection, but also standardised the form of the Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet as a combination of three quatrains and a final couplet in iambic pentameters ( p. 63).

Shakespeare’s Sonnets PDF

From Sonnets DT5 Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet 116)

Structure The first group of sonnets (1–126) was dedicated to a ‘Fair Youth’, a ‘Mr W.H.’ (one of Shakespeare’s friends and patrons, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke). The Fair Youth is the heart of the collection and all facets of love, in both its spiritual and physical dimensions, are explored. The intent of this group is to convince the young man to marry and have children, so as to survive in time. The Fair Youth is also promised eternal life thanks to poetry, which preserves his memory for all generations. Time is the main theme in 22 of the 126 sonnets dedicated to the Fair Youth. The sonnets of the second group (127–154) are addressed to a ‘Dark Lady’, a real physically unattractive woman who is loved because of her virtues. The speaker loves her with passionate devotion, despite the fact that she makes him suffer. A new element is the ironic tone and viewpoint which the speaker adopts.

MIND MAP

courtly love revisited

Shakespeare’s sonnets

themes: life, decay, poetry

154 sonnets first group: Fair Youth second group: Dark Lady

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What themes are present in Shakespeare’s sonnets? Describe them briefly. ▲ William Herbert of Cherbury, miniature portrait by Isaac Oliver (c. 1613–14)

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

2 Which two parts can be identified in the collection? Describe them briefly.

Ideas for your map: LOVE

p. 121

William Shakespeare

T7 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 10 Sonnets

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

In sonnet 18, dedicated to a Fair Youth, the poet celebrates the power of poetry to make the beloved immortal.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

as long as • decay • fade • eternal • rhetorical The poet begins the poem by asking his beloved a (1)

question, and then answers it.

Then he makes a sad statement about the (2)

of beauty due to various causes. However,

he declares his beloved will neither (3) (4)

nor get corrupted because poetry will make him

. The poet finally summarises the message of the sonnet: (5)

there are

living men, the sonnet will remain and make the beloved live again. Now read the sonnet and check your answers.

Shall I compare thee1 to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds2 of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date3:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion4 dimm’d5: And every fair6 from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Which is better, the summer or the beloved?

2 What is beauty destroyed by?

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade7, 12 When in eternal lines8 to time thou grow’st;

3 What does ‘eternal lines’ stand for?

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (Sonnet XVIII)

1 thee/thou: you 2 buds: boccioli 3 summer… date: l’affitto dell’estate ha durata troppo breve

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What is the main metaphor of the poem? 2 What summer is described in the sonnet, a pleasant continental summer or a changeable English summer? Consider the wind, sunshine, clouds and length of summer. 3 Why is line 9 the volta, or turning point? 4 Identify the rhyme scheme and the stanzas. Is this sonnet Elizabethan or Petrarchan ( p. 63)?

4 complexion: volto 5 dimm’d: oscurato 6 fair: bellezza

7 Nor... shade: né la morte si vanterà che tu vaghi nella sua ombra 8 lines: versi

INTERPRET 4 Renaissance poetry offers the beloved eternity through poetry. How does this compare with Anglo-Saxon poetry and medieval romances? 5 The sonnet is dedicated to the Fair Youth, probably Shakespeare’s patron, but it voices deep feelings of love. Could it be for a lady, too? Why?/Why not?

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T8 That time of year thou mayst in me behold 11

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance poetry

Sonnets

LEARNING DIGITAL

Sonnet 73 describes the effect of the passing of time on the poet, and his melancholy desire to be loved before it is too late.

Interactive analysis • Visual analysis • Translation

PDF

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

alive • concludes • weak • autumn The poet compares human life to a year and himself to a season, (1)

, and then himself

fire. The poet (3)

first to twilight and then to a (2)

love him even more for knowing that he will not be (4)

that the Youth will for much longer.

Now read the sonnet and check your answers.

1 thou mayst: you may 2 Bare... choirs: spogli chiostri in rovina 3 late: già 4 thou see’st: you see 5 twilight: tramonto 6 fadeth: fades (svanisce) 7 by and by: piano piano 8 doth take: takes 9 seals up: suggella 10 glowing: brillare 11 doth lie: lies 12 whereon: upon which 13 thou perceiv’st: tu vedi

That time of year thou mayst1 in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs2, where late3 the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st4 the twilight5 of such day As after sunset fadeth6 in the west; Which by and by7 black night doth take8 away, Death’s second self, that seals up9 all in rest.

1 What elements of autumn are there?

2 What is ‘Death’s second self’?

In me thou see’st the glowing10 of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie11, As the deathbed whereon12 it must expire, 12 Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

3 Is this fire a physical fire?

This thou perceiv’st13, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. (Sonnet LXXIII)

ANALYSE 3 Choose the correct alternatives. a

The poet invites the Youth to look at / ignore him.

5 Identify the rhyme scheme, and the features of the Shakespearean sonnet ( p. 63).

The poet is presented in his youth / old age.

the organisation into three quatrains and a couplet

The poet fears his lover’s betrayal / the arrival of death.

the turning point, volta, at l. 9

the development of the theme through metaphors

the conclusion in the couplet

The poet wants the Youth to love him / to be forgiven before it is too late.

4 Answer the questions. 1 What prevails in the sonnet, life or death? 2 Which of the five senses does the poet appeal to? Why? 3 Which tone do the metaphors have?

INTERPRET 6 The poet wants to be loved before it is too late for him. Is he blackmailing his beloved somehow, or is this sincere love? 7 Which sonnet do you prefer, sonnet 18 or this one? Why?

sad cynical joyful melancholic mournful 80

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William Shakespeare

T9 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun 12 Sonnets

Sonnet 130, dedicated to the Dark Lady, is a witty parody of both the ornate style to be found, for example, in Edmund Spenser’s Ye tradeful Merchants and of the figure of the angelic woman, to whom the poet prefers to a real one.

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

unfavourably • realism • beloved • angelic • praises and he (2)

The poet speaks about his (1)

compares his mistress’ eyes,

lips and hair, and then consider her cheeks and breath with crude (3) and her stride are not elegant, either. The poet finally (4) really is, and not an (5)

. His mistress’ voice his mistress for being what she

creature.

Now read the sonnet and check your answers. ▲ Portrait of Mary Fitton,

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun1; If hairs be wires2, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks3.

Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I, supposed to be the Dark Lady (1595).

1 dun: scuro 2 wires: fili dorati (Il riferimento è alle preziose retine che trattenevano e allo stesso tempo impreziosivano i capelli delle donne in età Elisabettiana, e che l’amata, non bionda ma scura di capelli, tiene invece sciolti.) 3 reeks: esala (con puzzo sgradevole) 4 treads: calpesta 5 she… compare: imbrogliata da paragoni bugiardi

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What beautiful realities is the poet’s mistress compared with?

2 What colour are not the lady’s cheeks?

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; 12 My mistress when she walks treads4 on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare5.

3 What does the poet like about his lady?

4 Why is the poet’s mistress precious to him?

(Sonnet CXXX) ANALYSE 3 Complete the table with the details of the blazon – the physical attributes of a woman presented through positive hyperbolic similes/metaphors. Tick the details that are clearly negative. Eyes

Lips

Breasts

Cheeks

Breath

Walk

2 What tone is used in the poem? informal

occasionally ironic

dignified

3 Considering the final point made in the couplet, what interpretation is more convincing for line 1? Why? a

The mistress’ eyes are worse than the sun.

The mistress’ eyes are better than the sun.

4 Consider the rhyme scheme and the stanzaic form. What model of the sonnet is present here? WEB QUEST 4 Answer the questions. 1 What qualities of the typical ideal woman of courtly love does the poet’s mistress possess? absolute perfection

innate grace

elegance

5 Shakespeare reverses the traditional blazon in a sort of caricature of the angelic woman. Search the web to find pictures that may stand for either the angelic woman or this Dark Lady, and upload a story about her and her lover.

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

The production

LEARNING DIGITAL Shakespeare’s plays PPT

Shakespeare’s plays

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Julius Caesar DT6 Brutus’ speech (from Act III, Scene II)

Shakespeare’s plays (1623) Shakespeare did not publish his plays as copyright did not exist at that time and the best way to protect one’s work was not to publish it at all. Heminges and Condell, two fellow actors from the King’s Men, published the First Folio in 1623; it contained 36 plays divided into tragedies, histories and comedies according to the taste of the time. Since no dating is provided, there is no certainty about the date of composition of Shakespeare’s works; the canon has been established on the basis of stylistic and thematic evidence, references to events of the time and the date of the first performance of each play (if known). In modern studies more subgroups than the three genres (tragedy, history and comedy) of the First Folio have been established. • Tragedies They deal with the great issues of all humanity’s existence: life, death, love, power. The most significant feature is ‘hamartia’, or the tragic flaw, the innate quality (neither good nor bad in itself) that leads a protagonist towards his or her own inexorable downfall and death. Unnatural events such as the storm in The Tempest or the ghosts in Macbeth signal the disorder and anarchy caused by ▲ Title-page of the First Folio published in 1623 the fall of these characters of high lineage. Some plays focus on the theme of revenge and are called revenge plays, i.e. Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, even though the latter escapes definition and is most often classified as a problem play. Romeo and Juliet has its own classification as a lyrical tragedy. • History plays English history plays deal with medieval and Tudor England while Roman plays deal with ancient Rome. The English history plays emphasise the need for order and stability in the kingdom and the dangers of civil war, and glorify Queen Elizabeth’s predecessors. Shakespeare’s depictions of past monarchs has made them into figures of myth, from the villain Richard III (an enemy of the Lancastrians) to Henry V, painted as a hero for his victory against the French in 1415 during the Hundred Years’ War. Some of the history plays are also classified as tragedies, for example, Julius Caesar and Richard III. • Comedies Separations, mistaken identities and tensions between generations provide conflict and lead to a crisis in the play before being solved with a happy ending; there is usually a marriage or some other festive event, and a dance. However, in some plays their atmosphere is not always cheerful, but tragic; they are called dark comedies or problem plays as it is impossible to classify them as either tragedies or comedies (Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure). Other plays are considered romances, a mix of tragedy and comedy with supernatural elements and magic (Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest).

▲ Karl Theodor von Piloty, Murder of Caesar (1865)

MIND MAP

tragedies

life, death, love, power 82

tragic flaw

First Folio (1623)

history plays

disorder – anarchy

English history plays

Roman plays

comedies

order and stability in the kingdom

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

happy ending marriage/dance

dark comedies or problem plays

romances

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s four phases Four different phases are usually identified in Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist: Experimentation phase (roughly from 1590 to 1596)

• Henry VI Part I English history play • Henry VI Part II English history play • Henry VI Part III English history play • Richard III English history play/tragedy • The Comedy of Errors comedy • Titus Andronicus revenge tragedy

• The Taming of the Shrew comedy • The Two Gentlemen of Verona comedy • Romeo and Juliet lyrical tragedy • Love’s Labour’s Lost comedy • A Midsummer Night’s Dream comedy

Comedies and histories (roughly from 1596 to 1601)

• Richard II English history play • The Merchant of Venice comedy • King John English history play • Henry IV Part I English history play • Henry IV Part II English history play

• Henry V English history play • Much Ado About Nothing comedy • As You Like It comedy • The Merry Wives of Windsor comedy

Problem plays and great tragedies (roughly from 1601 to 1608)

• Twelfth Night comedy • Troilus and Cressida dark comedy/ problem play

• All’s Well That Ends Well dark comedy/ problem play

• Measure for Measure dark comedy/ problem play

• Hamlet problem play/tragedy

• Othello tragedy • King Lear tragedy • Macbeth tragedy • Julius Caesar Roman play/tragedy • Antony and Cleopatra Roman play/tragedy • Coriolanus Roman play/tragedy • Timon of Athens romance

Reconciliation phase (from 1608 to 1613)

• Pericles romance • Cymbeline romance • The Winter’s Tale dark comedy/problem play

• The Tempest romance • Henry VIII English history play • The Two Noble Kinsmen comedy

The experimentation phase (roughly from 1590 to 1596)

▲ A scene from Anthony and

Cleopatra, starring Helen Mirren

Shakespeare experimented mainly with different kinds of comedy and the history play. The Comedy of Errors is a farcical adaptation of Menaechmi by Plautus with twins separated at birth and finally reunited, while in The Taming of the Shrew, the story of a proud woman tamed by her husband, Shakespeare first used the device of multiple plots to explore the relationship between the two sexes in terms of power and dominance, and to expose misogynist attitudes. Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona are comedies about the intricacies of love as presented in court poetry. Romeo and Juliet ( p. 88), a lyrical tragedy, presents the same issues through the love story of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet in the context of the rivalry of their families. A Midsummer Night’s Dream ( p. 92), debates the illusion of love in the magic world of fairies and is Shakespeare’s first work to have an internal play. He also wrote his first English history plays, Henry VI (in 3 parts) and Richard III, his first study of the Machiavellian villain. Titus Andronicus was his first tragedy modelled on the Senecan model with murders and a lot of violence. The comedies and histories (roughly from 1596 to 1601) The comedies of this period still explored romantic love in its complexity. The Merry Wives of Windsor focuses on the love affairs of Falstaff, the corpulent bombastic soldier that Shakespeare introduced in Henry IV. Shakespeare paints many strong-willed women: Rosalind in As You Like It, Beatrix in Much Ado About Nothing and Portia in The Merchant of Venice. When Antonio cannot return the loan he obtained from Shylock, the Jewish money-lender, she disguises herself as a lawyer and successfully defends Antonio from paying back his loan with a pound of flesh. Antisemitism was a common attitude in Elizabethan England, but the comedy offers two excellent examples of Shakespeare’s ability to defy his audience’s expectations with Shylock’s selfdefence of his own humanity and Portia’s claim for mercy. 83

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

The second cycle of histories (Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V) covered English history from the 14th century to the Wars of the Roses. Henry V is presented not only as the King who successfully fights a much larger French army at Agincourt, but also as the monarch who, conscious of his role, rejects the friend of his dissolute youth, Falstaff. The problem plays and the great tragedies (roughly from 1601 to 1608)

IN ACTION They said of this...

Shakespearean drama and Greek drama Shakespearean drama and Greek drama may be compared to statuary and painting. In statuary, as in Greek drama, the characters must be few, because the very essence of statuary is a high degree of abstraction. Nothing undignified must be placed in company with what is dignified. Compare a small group [of statuary] with a picture by Raphael or Titian, in which an immense number of figures may be introduced, a beggar, a cripple, a dog, or a cat; an effect is produced equally harmonious to the mind, more true to nature with its varied colours, and, in all respects but one, superior to statuary.

Shakespeare worked on great tragedies and the disturbing ‘dark’ comedies or ‘problem plays’ (with the exception of one romantic comedy with a comical subplot, Twelfth Night). Measure for Measure shows that moral justice is superior to the law itself while All’s Well That Ends Well discusses issues of virginity and sex. Although Shakespeare doesn’t contest the morality of his time concerning sexual life, the play shows that virginity is a weapon used by women against men rather than a virtue. Troilus and Cressida questions values such as hierarchy, honour and love; it is sometimes classified as a tragedy because of the tragic conclusion of Troilus and Cressida’s love story. Hamlet ( p. 101) is classified as a tragedy in the First Folio because the protagonist Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, and many other characters die at the end. It is the most complex of the problem plays as it discusses regicide, fatherhood, love, friendship and the difference between revenge and justice in a totally original interpretation of the revenge tragedy. The great tragedies are Macbeth ( p. 110), King Lear and Othello. Macbeth presents the theme of regicide combined with supernatural prophecies while King Lear is one of the saddest of Shakespeare’s works, with the tragic deaths of the old King Lear and his youngest daughter, Cordelia. Othello is about the folly of jealousy, which leads the Moor of Venice, Othello, to kill his faithful wife, Desdemona, after Iago, yet another villain, has poisoned the Moor’s heart. The Roman plays of this phase include Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, together with the tragedy Timon of Athens, possibly written with Thomas Middleton, a dramatist of the time. Both Antony and Cleopatra’s and Julius Caesar’s plots are based on Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives; the former is a tragic love story, while the latter focuses on the dilemma of Brutus, conflicted between his friendship with Caesar and his patriotism. Both plays can also be classified as tragic because of their atmosphere and endings. The reconciliation phase (from 1608 to 1613) This last phase, which saw Shakespeare finally retire from the stage, was dominated by the romances with recurring themes of loss and final reconciliation. Characters are faced with difficult moral dilemmas because of competing loyalties, but the final scenes reward the characters who kept their loyalty to their master or husband. Pericles may be the result of a collaboration with another dramatist, while Cymbeline is based on legends that formed part of the ‘Matter of Britain’ concerning the early Celtic British King

(Abridged and adapted from S.T. Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, 1811–19)

1 Dignified (D), or exuberant (E)? Choose. 1 Greek drama:

D E

2 Shakespearean drama: D E 3 painting (Raphael/Titan):

D E

4 statuary:

D E

▲ Titian, Ecce Homo (1543)

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

▶ The Venus of Milos

William Shakespeare IN ACTION English in action 2 find the noun from the given words. 1 canon

canonical

anarchical

tamed

to dominate

rival

to expect

to forgive

Cunobeline. The Winter’s Tale deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy and is sometimes considered a problem play because it is filled with intense psychological drama, but ends happily. The Tempest is Shakespeare’s last play, and is considered his farewell to the theatre; Prospero, the former Duke of Milan and a wizard, chooses reconciliation and forgiveness although his personality and interaction with the other characters remain ambiguous.

Sources Shakespeare took inspiration from existing stories, plays and poems. He probably learned the practice of absorbing and imitating genres and works at Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar school; its syllabus offered him a wide repertoire, and translations of Latin, French and Italian works were made available following the interest for classical works associated with the Renaissance ( p. 62). A major source for Roman history plays was Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, biographies of famous men such as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, in the English translation by Sir Thomas North in 1579, Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. For his English history plays, and also for such tragedies as Macbeth and King Lear, Shakespeare used the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a collective description of British history. Shakespeare’s use of sources ranged from imitating or even copying specific passages almost word for word to reinterpreting the plot and creating characters with memorable personalities, as happens with Hamlet, where the crude avenger of the Senecan model is transformed into an enigmatic, afflicted being. MIND MAP

experimentation phase

comedies

English history plays

Shakespeare’s four phases

comedies and histories

Machiavellian villain

problem plays and great tragedies

English histories

comedies

Plautus multiple plots intricacies of love

romantic love in its complexity

14th-century Wars of the Roses

great tragedies

reconciliation phase

Roman plays

romances

‘dark comedies’ or ‘problem plays’

loss and final reconciliation

great issues debated critically

innocence

CHECK OUT 10 In the experimentation phase, he tried writing only tragedies, but was unsatisfied with the result and so dedicated himself to comedies and history plays.

1 Choose all the correct statements. 1

Shakespeare published the First Folio with 36 plays (tragedies, comedies and histories) in 1623.

o dating of the plays is provided: this has made it difficult to N establish the date of composition of Shakespeare’s works.

3 4

I n the second phase, Shakespeare kept exploring romantic love in its complexity and the problems of order in the history plays.

Today many subgenres are identified in the canon.

T he main feature of tragedies is the absence of noble characters; ordinary people fall victim to hamartia.

T he third phase was dominated by romances, characterised by reconciliation and peace.

The fourth phase saw Shakespeare retire from the stage.

T he fall of the protagonists is reflected in the chaos of both nature and the state.

Shakespeare’s plots are all of his own imagination.

2 Answer the questions.

T he English history plays emphasise the need for order and stability in the kingdom and the dangers of civil war, and glorify Queen Elizabeth’s ancestors.

1 What problems are there in establishing Shakespeare’s canon, i.e. chronology and genres of his plays?

omedies are the easiest to define as they all have happy endings C and a constantly cheerful atmosphere full of laughter.

Some comedies are identified as problem plays or dark comedies.

4 What were Shakespeare’s sources?

There are four phases in Shakespeare’s career.

5 How did he use them?

2 What genres and subgenres are identified in the canon in modern criticism? 3 What phases are identified in Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist?

Ideas for your map: ART/POWER/DEATH/LOVE

p. 121

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

In love with Shakespeare There have been countless adaptions of Shakespeare’s plays, but also his life and personality have caught the attention of filmmakers. Sir Kenneth Branagh (1960) has grown old with William Shakespeare‘s plays, as did two other great actors and directors of the 20th century, Orson Welles (1915–85) and Laurence Olivier (1907–89), all fascinated by the Bard. Who was the man behind the works?

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

All is True (2018)

The film imagines that ‘Will’ Shakespeare made up the plot of Romeo and Juliet as his own personal love story with Viola De Lesseps, a noblewoman, develops. She loves the theatre and enters his company disguised as a boy in order to get a role. She obtains the part of Romeo, but in the end she plays Juliet while Will plays Romeo. Their love makes their performance on the stage so convincing that all the audience is moved, and Shakespeare wins the favour of Elizabeth I sitting in disguise in the audience. Outside the romance, the film also shows great depth and understanding of the nature of ‘show business’ of both Shakespeare’s age and also today’s.

This film about Shakespeare in retirement looks into the greatest mystery of all: Shakespeare, the man. Little is known for sure about the details of Shakespeare’s life. But as Shakespeare says in the film, ‘I never let the truth get in the way of a good story‘. Neither does Kenneth Branagh; he directs the film, as well as playing Shakespeare, who is living in retirement with his wife, Anne Hathaway, and facing a few personal crises – including the destruction of The Globe in a fire and the death of his son Hamnet. That wound is the emotional centre of his film.

Upstart Crow (2016) Upstart Crow is a British sitcom which was part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The title comes from ‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers‘, a critique of Shakespeare by one of the University Wits, Robert Greene, in 1592. Will Shakespeare is not yet a national myth, but an aspiring playwright who commutes between his family home in Stratford-upon-Avon and Central London, where he does most of his work. Recurring humour is drawn from parallels between Will’s travels and frustration with modern day transportation, and the playwright’s use of ten words when one would be enough.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Search the web for clips of the films and the series. Here are some suggestions: Shakespeare in Love 1 Shakespeare breaks rehearsals for his still unfinished play to write what will become his most famous sonnet. ‘Shall I Compare Thee’. 2 The voice of the boy actor playing Juliet has changed and he can’t play her role. What can save the show from total disaster? ‘It’s a mystery’. All is True 3 Shakespeare proves to a fellow citizen in Stratford-upon-Avon that he was not just a great poet, but also an incredible businessman in London. 4 Shakespeare, now retired and a gardener, gives a hopeful writer the best advice ever about how to become a name that will never be forgotten. Upstart Crow 5 Shakespeare makes up modern English on the spot and fills it with everyday idioms. 6 Shakespeare struggles with the iambic pentameter to write the 154 sonnets that will give him fame. 2 Compare what you have watched with what you know about Shakespeare so far. Which version of the playwright’s life and personality appeals to you the most? Why? WORK CREATIVE 3 Imagine you are a film director who intends to make a series about Shakespeare’s life. Which event would you like to dramatise? Outline the first episode by choosing the ‘catalyst fact/character’, and choose your actors/actresses from among your classmates. Ask them to give you their first impressions and their suggestions on how to make your episode perfect.

Ideas for your map: ILLUSION/TRUTH

p. 121

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

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From Romeo and Juliet DT7 Goodbye, my lord (from Act III, Scene V)

IN ACTION Across time and space

Dancing, a passion for all times

Dancing was an essential part of life in Shakespeare’s England. Commoners danced at weddings, Maydays and other festivities, and dancing was a necessary accomplishment for a gentleman and gentlewoman. Queen Elizabeth danced in the morning to keep fit, and James I loved masques because there was so much dancing in them. Beyond the pleasure of dancing in itself, the dance was an accepted symbol of harmony, and Shakespeare uses dancing this way in many of his plays. 1 Make a brief survey among your classmates to see what dancing means to them. Can you see any similarities/differences with the past?

Romeo and Juliet (1594–95) Romeo and Juliet is a lyrical tragedy which stands apart in Shakespeare’s canon because it was the first play to put love at the heart of conflict. It is a tragedy because the lovers commit suicide when they think their beloved is dead. It is lyrical because Romeo and Juliet’s duets are examples of courtly love, even though the author has gone beyond its conventions to present a relationship between equals and even suggests that Juliet’s reasoning is more articulate and that she is more mature than Romeo. Shakespeare has carefully developed both of their personalities so as to make them life-like characters. The play moves towards tragedy in the third act, but there are several elements typical of comedies in it, such as the opposition between the foolish adults and the determined young people, or the comic scenes with Juliet’s nurse. The contrast between love (Romeo and Juliet) and power (their families) also adds a political dimension to the play.

THE PLOT Two families in Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, are mortal enemies and have continuous fights, which the Prince of Verona tries to manage. Romeo Montague and his friends go to a Capulet ball without being invited or recognised at first, and while dancing Romeo meets Juliet Capulet. They instantly fall in love, meet again in secret that night and the next day Friar Lawrence marries them, with only Juliet’s nurse knowing about the marriage. In a fight Tybalt, a Capulet and Juliet’s cousin, kills Mercutio, Romeo’s friend and a relative of the Prince, and Romeo avenges Mercutio’s death by killing Tybalt. Romeo is banished from the city by the Prince and the two lovers sadly part after their wedding night. Juliet’s father decides to marry her to Count Paris but she refuses, and with the help of Friar Lawrence she drinks a potion that simulates death. She plans to run away with Romeo once the effect has worn off. Romeo hears of Juliet’s apparent death before receiving Juliet’s letter informing him about her plan, and he comes back to Verona. He kills Paris and, thinking Juliet is really dead, poisons himself in Juliet’s family tomb. Just after he has poisoned himself, Juliet wakes up and, seeing that Romeo is dead, stabs herself. The Capulet and Montague families reconcile before the bodies of their children.

Characters • Juliet Juliet reveals her maturity even though she is only thirteen. She proves that she is ready to risk everything to marry Romeo and then to oppose the marriage that her father intends to impose on her. Shakespeare uses the language of courtly love in the duets between Romeo and Juliet to give her a characterisation well beyond those conventions: Romeo asks for a kiss in the first quatrain of their ‘kiss sonnet’ (a sonnet that Shakespeare wrote as part of their first meeting at the Capulet ball), and Juliet matches Romeo’s quatrain with one of her own. Thus, she claims the position of co-creator, not object, demonstrating not only that she understands this language, but that she speaks it fluently. In the ‘balcony scene’ her reasoning about the relationship between appearance and reality, a major theme of Shakespeare’s canon, is evidence of her vivid intelligence.

• Romeo Romeo is impulsive and more immature (though perhaps a little older) than Juliet, and it is partly his impetuosity that she falls in love with. As a young man he is more directly involved in the issues of power and fighting that dominate the world of adults, but his passionate love for Juliet is so honest and true that he chooses her as his beloved and wife with no hesitation. 88

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

William Shakespeare IN ACTION

Themes

English in action

An opening Chorus tells the audience about the play they are about to see: a passionate and tragic love story between two teenagers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, in the middle of a terrible feud between two rival families. When Romeo and Juliet meet, it is love at first sight. For Elizabethans, passionate love uncontrolled by reason was dangerous, but Shakespeare resolves this, too, and has them married in secret to make their love not only acceptable to his audience, but also to bring it to a level of perfection that cannot be questioned. Their ‘parting scene’ in bed after their first (and last) night together is one of the most moving scenes ever written. Their enemy is their families, that is the world of adults who do not listen to young people and their desires for their futures, and think everything in terms of political power. It is this deep hostility from a world that refuses the change that young people can bring to it that condemns the young lovers. From the very beginning of the play Romeo and Juliet have premonitions that their love story will not work out. Already in the first act when Juliet realises Romeo is a Montague and her family’s enemy, she exclaims, ‘My grave is like to be my wedding bed‘ and ‘My only love sprung from my only hate‘. The opening Chorus calls Romeo and Juliet ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers‘, suggesting fate itself is against them. Romeo and Juliet choose to marry in secret, but the feud between their families forces them apart and a series of unlucky coincidences leads them both to death. Their young age does not stop them from making their own choices, especially Juliet, who marries Romeo in secret and then challenges her father, who has chosen a husband for her. The contrast between foolish old people and determined young people is a typical theme of Shakespeare’s comedies. When the moment comes, both Romeo and Juliet choose to commit suicide rather than live without the other. The reconciliation of their families ends the play; Juliet and Romeo are dead, but it is their love that saves the world of adults from their blindness and potential self-destruction.

2 Match each adjective (1–6) to its synonym (a–f). 1

articulate

impulsive

vivid

passionate

foolish

determined

a ardent b impetuous c irrational d sharp e effective/persuasive f strong-willed

Language and style Much of Romeo and Juliet is written in blank verse, with a few examples of prose; Juliet’s nurse, a lower-class character, speaks in prose or verse. The tradition of sonnets about courtly love had given Shakespeare full command of the language of idealised love, with a rich imagery often involving opposites like ‘love’ and ‘hate’, ‘grave’ and ‘wedding’, ‘light’ and ‘darkness’. The playwright uses this rich repertoire of images to show the differences in personality and maturity of the main characters; Romeo uses more conventional language, while Juliet uses more concrete vocabulary, thus showing how mature and surprisingly modern she is. MIND MAP

lyrical tragedy

relation between equals

Romeo and Juliet

love vs power

suicide of lovers

Juliet: mature, intelligent

courtly love

Romeo: impulsive

teenagers vs adults

premonitions – fate – death

blank verse

▶ A scene from the 1996 film adaptation Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why is Romeo and Juliet a lyrical tragedy? 2 How different are Juliet’s and Romeo’s personalities? 3 What themes are present in the play? List them with a few words for each.

Ideas for your map: LOVE

p. 121

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis Visual analysis

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STEP IN

T10 The balcony scene 13 Romeo and Juliet

The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous in the world. Romeo, in love with Juliet, climbs the wall around the Capulets’ home, hoping to see her again. Juliet comes out onto her balcony and considers his name and why this should be an obstacle to their love. Romeo overhears her, reveals himself and declares his love.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

balcony • danger • love • voice • joy • climbed • alone Romeo has (1)

the wall and is now in the Capulet orchard. Juliet makes her appearance . She thinks she is (3)

on the (2)

but Romeo can hear and see her. She

talks about her concerns for a while, and then Romeo decides to speak to her. First, she doesn’t realise who he is but then she recognises his (4) him that his life is in (6) (7)

and is filled with (5)

. She warns

if her relatives find him on their property as he declares his

to her.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Romeo But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief 5 That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. It is my lady, O, it is my love! 10 O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses, I will answer it. I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks. […] See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! 15 O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! Juliet Ay me! Romeo She speaks! O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art 20 As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven. […] Juliet O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, 25 And I’ll no longer be a Capulet. Romeo [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? Juliet ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s a Montague? It is nor hand nor foot, 30 Nor arm nor face, nor any other part 90

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

Romeo Oh, quale luce vedo sprigionarsi lassù, dal vano di quella finestra? È l’oriente, lassù, e Giulietta è il sole! Sorgi, bel sole, e l’invidiosa luna già pallida di rabbia ed ammalata uccidi, perché tu, che sei sua ancella, sei di gran lunga di lei più splendente. Non restare sua ancella, se invidiosa essa è di te; la verginal sua veste s’è fatta ormai d’un color verde scialbo e non l’indossano altre che le sciocche. Gettala via! Oh, sì, è la mia donna, l’amore mio. Ah, s’ella lo sapesse! Ella mi parla, senza dir parola. Come mai? È il suo occhio che mi discorre, ed io risponderò. Oh, ma che sto dicendo... Presuntuoso ch’io sono! Non è a me, ch’ella discorre. […] Guarda com’ella poggia la sua gota a quella mano! Un guanto vorrei essere, su quella mano, e toccar quella guancia! Giulietta Ahimè! Romeo Dice qualcosa! Parla ancora, angelo luminoso, sei sì bella, e da lassù tu spandi sul mio capo tanta luce stanotte come un alato messaggero celeste. […] Giulietta Romeo, Romeo! Perché sei tu Romeo? Ah, rinnega tuo padre! Ricusa il tuo casato! O, se proprio non vuoi, giurami amore, ed io non sarò più una Capuleti! Romeo [Tra sé] Che faccio, resto zitto ad ascoltarla, oppure le rispondo? Giulietta Il tuo nome soltanto m’è nemico; ma tu saresti tu, sempre Romeo per me, quand’anche non fosti un Montecchi. Che è infatti Montecchi? Non è una mano, né un piede, né un braccio, né una faccia, né nessun’altra parte

William Shakespeare Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, 35 Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for thy name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. Romeo I take thee at thy word. 40 Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. Juliet What man art thou that, thus bescreen’d in night So stumblest on my counsel? Romeo By a name 45 I know not how to tell thee who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee; Had I it written, I would tear the word. Juliet My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words 50 Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague? Romeo Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike. Juliet How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, 55 And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here. Romeo With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt; 60 Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me. Juliet If they do see thee, they will murder thee. Romeo Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.

che possa dirsi appartenere a un uomo. Ah, perché tu non porti un altro nome! Ma poi, che cos’è un nome? Forse che quella che chiamiamo rosa cesserebbe d’avere il suo profumo se la chiamassimo con altro nome? Così s’anche Romeo non si dovesse più chiamar Romeo, chi può dire che non conserverebbe la cara perfezione ch’è la sua? Rinuncia dunque, Romeo, al tuo nome, che non è parte della tua persona, e in cambio prenditi tutta la mia. Romeo Io ti prendo in parola! D’ora in avanti tu chiamami “Amore”, ed io sarò per te non più Romeo, perché m’avrai così ribattezzato. Giulietta Oh, qual uomo sei tu, che protetto dal buio della notte, vieni a inciampar così sui miei pensieri? Romeo Dirtelo con un nome, non saprei; il mio nome, cara santa, è odioso a me perché è nemico a te. Lo straccerei, se lo portassi scritto. Giulietta L’orecchio mio non ha bevuto ancora cento parole dalla voce tua, che ne conosco il suono: non sei Romeo tu, ed un Montecchi? Romeo No, nessuno dei due, bella fanciulla, se nessuno dei due è a te gradito. Giulietta Ma come hai fatto a penetrar qui dentro? Dimmi come, e perché. Erti e scoscesi sono i muri dell’orto da scalare, e se alcuno dei miei ti sorprendesse, sapendo chi sei, t’ucciderebbe. Romeo Ho scavalcato il muro sovra l’ali leggere dell’amore; amor non teme ostacoli di pietra, e tutto quello che amore può fare trova sempre l’ardire di tentare. Perciò i parenti tuoi non rappresentano per me un ostacolo. Giulietta Ma se ti trovan qui, ti uccideranno! Romeo Ahimè, c’è più pericolo per me negli occhi tuoi che in cento loro spade: basta che tu mi guardi con dolcezza, perch’io mi senta come corazzato contro l’odio di tutti i tuoi parenti.

(Abridged from Act II, Scene II) UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Why is the moon, in Romeo’s words, envious of Juliet? 2 Why does Romeo wish he were a glove? 3 What does Juliet ask Romeo? Why? 4 Why does Romeo hate his name?

4 Juliet contrasts the reality of an actual person with their name in her soliloquy. Which matters to her between the two? 5 Juliet is inquisitive and determined to understand the reality of things. What does this tell us about her maturity despite her young age? 6 What presages of death are present in the text, and who introduces this dark tone?

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Underline all the words alluding to light and brightness that Romeo uses to talk to Juliet (ll.1–3). What kind of language is this, and why does he use it? 2 How many questions does Juliet ask from l. 22 to l. 38 and why? 3 Juliet talks about the name of the rose. What makes it beautiful, its name or its smell?

DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Women can live and love as men do. Group A believe that Juliet stands for independent women. Group B believe that she suffers from the limits her time imposed on her as a woman. PDF

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From A Midsummer Night's Dream DT8 The magic juice (from Act II, Scene I)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1594–95) A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy with magic, love and comic misunderstandings involving the rulers of Athens, the world of the fairies, four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors. In the play, Shakespeare deals with the conventional theme of all comedies, marriage, in the magic atmosphere of a night of illusion where ‘doting’ (infatuation in love, represented by a magic flower juice that makes you instantly fall in love with the first person you see) reigns over ‘loving’ (real love) for a night, causing much chaos, confusion and disillusion. The action mainly takes place one night in the forest of Arden, with fairies and magic; Shakespeare develops multiple plots to explore the difference between ‘doting’ and ‘loving’, and ends the play with three weddings and a play within the play that the couples watch.

THE PLOT Theseus, Duke of Athens, is preparing for his marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Meanwhile, Egeus has chosen Demetrius as a husband for his daughter Hermia. However, she is in love with Lysander and runs away from Athens with him. Demetrius and Helena follow them. In the Arden forest, Oberon, King of the Fairies, has quarrelled with his Queen, Titania, over an Indian boy she refuses to give him. Oberon orders his servant, the fairy Puck, to place the magic flower juice on the eyelids of Demetrius as he sleeps. Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and puts the flower juice on Lysander’s eyes; when Helena wakes him up he falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Bottom, the weaver, is to play the lover in the play of the Mechanicals, but Puck gives him an ass‘s head. Titania, who has received the love potion, too, wakes up and

falls in love with him. Oberon places the flower juice into Demetrius’ eyes. He wakes up, sees Helena, and falls in love with her. Now both men are in love with Helena, and neither loves Hermia. Hermia can’t believe that she has been abandoned, and quarrels with Helena. Oberon places the juice back in Titania’s eyes, and she returns to him. Bottom’s head returns to human status and he goes back to Athens. Puck makes the two men fall asleep and places the juice back on Lysander’s eyes. He wakes up, sees Hermia, and loves her again. Demetrius, still under the effect of the flower juice, loves Helena, who accepts him. Theseus with Hippolyta, Lysander with Hermia, and Demetrius with Helena, return to the palace for a triple wedding. The play concludes with a farcical presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe’s love story by Bottom and his fellow players.

Sources Various sources, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale ( p. 53), served as inspiration for A Midsummer Night’s Dream: mutability in love governs the relations among the characters, and the play within the play of the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s Book IV ends the comedy, though in parodic terms. The head of Bottom, one of the Mechanicals (the artisans), is temporarily metamorphosed into an ass‘s head. The four lovers ‘fighting’ over their beloved is a romantic but also comic rendering of the idealised love presented in Chaucer’s tale. IN ACTION Across time and space

Ovid never leaves us Metamorphoses by the Latin poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) presents over 200 myths whose main theme is metamorphosis, or change. In the work, there are animal transformations, powerful supernatural beings such as gods and demigods interacting with humans and their reality, and stories of love, sex, pursuit and flight. In Book IV he tells the story of the forbidden love of Pyramus and Thisbe, who talk to each other through a hole in the wall connecting their houses. 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is typically Ovidian in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? 2 Shakespeare tells Pyramus and Thisbe’s story in parodic terms. Why do you think he changed Ovid’s story this way? 92

▲ 15th-century French Illuminated manuscript from Ovid’s Metamorphoses

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

William Shakespeare IN ACTION

Themes

English in action

• Doting and magic

2 Match each verb (1–5) with its meaning (a–e). 1

to metamorphose

to bray

to claim

to reject

to cling to something

a to keep believing in something b to state something in words c to refuse to accept or consider d to make a strong animal sound typical of asses or donkeys e to change into something different

Conflict is centred on the four Athenian lovers, and doubled in the conflict between Oberon and Titania. Love as a funny game of doting is the main theme and the heart of conflict. Under the effect of the magic juice, a person falls in love with the first creature they see, and forgets any previous love; they even see beauty where there is none, like Titania, who falls in love with a braying Bottom wearing an ass‘s head.

• The lovers’ reactions to doting When Titania is restored to her senses, she considers her memory of her doting as a dream; Bottom, instead, vaguely remembers what happened but he feels that he was loved, and that it was sweet. As for the four Athenian lovers, Hermia and Helena believe that Lysander’s passionate declarations of love for Helena cannot be real while Lysander and Demetrius are more easily confounded than the women. Shakespeare’s women are not so easily deceived by illusory passion, and look for sincere love.

• Imagination At the end of the comedy, Theseus claims that all the events of the night in the forest were nothing but ‘imagination’, as ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet/Are of imagination all compact‘; Titania also rejects her doting for Bottom. However, Bottom still clings to the dream of having been loved and Hippolyta says that the effects of this ‘imaginary world’ are real in the joy and union of the lovers. Unlike Bottom’s temporary transformation into the unworthy recipient of a fairy’s love, the Athenians’ ‘escape’ into the mysterious world of the fairy forest has changed them in a real way, and cured them of their doting. The final staging of the farcical comedy of love of Pyramus and Thisbe in Act V by the Mechanicals not only celebrates all the weddings, but also shows the power of art to depict love. MIND MAP

comedy – marriage

love

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

magic – misunderstandings

imagination – art

multiple plots

play within the play

doting vs loving

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How different is ‘doting’ from ‘loving’? 2 What were Shakespeare’s sources for A Midsummer Night’s Dream? 3 How do the four Athenians react to doting? 4 What different views do the characters have of imagination?

▶ Edwin Landseer, Titania and Bottom (1851)

Ideas for your map: LOVE

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

LEARNING DIGITAL Visual analysis

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STEP IN

T11 Doting for an ass 14 A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Bottom’s head is metamorphosed into an ass‘s head by Puck, who believes that this appearance is better suited to Bottom’s character. Bottom goes near the sleeping Titania, whom Oberon has treated with the flower juice. She wakes up when Bottom brays with an ass’s voice.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

reasonable • ass • Fairies • opportunity • wakes up Titania is sleeping and (1)

; Bottom starts braying like an (2)

and sings

a song. Titania praises his song and asks him to sing again; she wants him to stay with her because she has fallen in love with him. Bottom replies that her love is not (3) he wants to seize the (4) (5)

, but accepts it because

to be loved. To show her love, Titania will ask the

to serve him.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Titania [Awaking] What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? Bottom [Sings] The finch, the sparrow and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, 5 Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay;- for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so? 10 Titania I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note; So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. 15 Bottom Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion. 20 Titania Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. Bottom Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn. Titania Out of this wood do not desire to go: Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. 25 I am a spirit of no common rate; The summer still doth tend upon my state; And I do love thee: therefore, go with me; I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, 94

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Titania (Svegliandosi) Quale angelo mi sveglia dal mio giaciglio in fiore? Bottone (Canta) Il fringuello, il passero e l’allodola, il monotono cucco al cui cantar più d’un marito becco rispondere non osa… e già, perché chi mai vorrebbe spremersi il cervello per rispondere ad un così sciocco uccello? Chi vorrebbe un uccello sbugiardare “cucù”, “cucù”, mettendosi a gridare? Titania Ti prego, gentile mortale, canta ancora, il mio orecchio è d’amor rapito per le tue note così come incantato è il mio occhio dalle tue sembianze; ed il potere delle tue virtù è tale su di me, dal primo sguardo, ch’io debbo dir, giurar, che io ti amo. Bottone Mi parrebbe, signora, che avreste poca ragione per ciò: e tuttavia, a dire il vero, ragione ed amore van di rado insieme oggidì; ed è proprio un peccato che un qualche onesto loro vicino non s’adoperi a renderli amici. Si, coglierò l’occasione. Titania Sei tanto saggio quanto bello. Bottone Ah, no, né l’uno né l’altro; perché se avessi abbastanza intelligenza da uscire da questo bosco, ne avrei già quanto basta per svignarmela. Titania Da questo bosco non desiderare d’uscire: Tu resterai qui, che tu lo voglia o no. Io non sono spirito di poco conto; nel mio regno è ancora estate e io t’amo. Perciò vieni con me; ti darò fate che ti servano;

William Shakespeare 30

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep; And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed1!

ed esse cercheranno per te gioielli in fondo al mare e canteranno per te mentre tu dormi su un letto di fiori; e io ti purificherò del tuo peso mortale, così che come spirito, fatto solo d’aria tu vagherai. Fiordipisello! Ragnatela! Bruscolo! Grandisénape!

(Abridged from Act III, Scene I) 1 Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth e Mustardseed sono i nomi delle fate di Titania

◀ Theatre performance

of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What is Bottom’s song (ll. 3–6) about? 2 What does Bottom think of the cuckoo’s song? 3 What will the Fairies do on Titania’s order? ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Titania is the victim of doting: is her love based on Bottom’s real nature, or is it a product of her imagination? Focus on his appearance, voice and ‘virtues’. 2 What symbolises Bottom’s loss of his own identity under the command of Titania? 4 Bottom is wearing an ass’s head, but is a man of common sense, who (choose all the correct options):

5 Write the rhyme scheme for ll. 3–6 and ll. 23–32; which character always speaks in verse? 6 Focus on the use of prose and verse in the text. Are these statements true (T) or false (F)? Correct the false ones. 1 Bottom’s language is similar to Titania’s because they both speak in verse all the time.

T F

2 The use of verse corresponds to the dignity of Titania’s role as the Queen of the Fairies and the sovereign of the magic forest where summer has no end.

T F

3 The use of prose, often associated in Shakespeare with characters of humble origins, is proper to Bottom’s condition as an artisan and an ‘ass’.

T F

4 Titania’s use of verse is conveniently associated with her perfect love for Bottom.

T F

considers his own song about birds admirable and deep.

sees his song about birds as illusory and vain.

7 Debate the statement in groups.

sees no connection between love and reason.

finds Titania’s doting on him reasonable and fair.

Loving as mere illusion is better than the reality of not loving at all.

nderstands that doting, i.e. illusion, and not love, is at work in u Titania’s fascination for him.

Group A believe feeling in love is wonderful in any case. Group B believe that there must be truth and sincerity in love.

DEBATE

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THE ARTS

Shakespearean women fall in love Shakespeare‘s female characters have fascinated not only viewers and readers, but also artists, who have chosen their most memorable scenes of love as subjects for their works. Juliet has been a favourite one; her statue in Verona attracts thousands of visitors and Hayez, one of the most famous painter of Romantic subjects, chose her last kiss with Romeo for one of his most celebrated works. The magical atmosphere surrounding Titania in Fuseli‘s painting is totally different, but once again the female figure looks fascinating and is the centre of the painting. Simmons‘ Hermia physically towers above Lysander in the painting in the same way she is superior to him in her view of love.

The bronze statue of Juliet and the balcony, Verona, Italy

The Last Kiss Given by Juliet to Romeo (1823) by Francesco Hayez

Popular tradition elected this tower house (late 13th–early 14th century) and its balcony as Juliet’s house. The house was restored at the beginning of the 20th century and in 1968 Veronese artist Nereo Costantini was commissioned to make the bronze statue of Juliet, now stored in a museum. A replica stands in the courtyard so that tourists can freely touch it.

Juliet and Romeo kiss for what will be their last kiss after their wedding night, in the half light of the early morning. He is about to climb out of the window as the Nurse enters the room in the background to warn Juliet that her mother is coming.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

Titania and Bottom (c. 1790) by Henry Fuseli Titania stands next to the seated Bottom with his ass‘s head and surrounded by the fairies. The white female silhouettes stand out in the black background.

Hermia and Lysander (1870) by John Simmons Hermia and Lysander are lost in the enchanted wood at night, when everything is permitted, and they are surrounded by fairies. Lysander bows to Hermia as he tries to persuade her to sleep with him, under the light of the moon, and she refuses.

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

The Merchant of Venice (1596–97)

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full plot • Discrimination makes black matter not matter at all

Probably written between 1596 and 1597, Shakespeare’s comedy develops several plots. The love story is about Bassanio and Portia and the test of the three caskets (cofanetti) he has to pass to win her love. The contract between Antonio, a rich merchant and Bassanio’s friend, and Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, is the source of conflict in the comedy. The play is controversial for its supposed anti-Semitism, a common attitude in Elizabethan England. However, Shakespeare also offers his audience the perspective of the oppressed through Shylock’s words about his condition as a Jew, and investigates the revenge-justice-mercy relationship, especially through the figure of Portia. Hamlet ( p. 101) explores the revenge-justice issue again by presenting multiple avengers who make their own choices and thus determine their destiny.

THE PLOT Antonio, a wealthy member of Venice’s ruling class of merchant princes, wants to help his dearest friend, Bassanio, who needs money to win the love of the wealthy and beautiful Portia. Antonio agrees with Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, that he will repay Bassanio’s loan of 3,000 ducats if his friend fails to do so. If the debt remains unpaid, Shylock will be allowed to cut a pound of flesh from any part of Antonio’s body. Bassanio goes to Portia and passes a test set by her dead father; of three caskets, one gold, one silver and one made of lead, he chooses the one made of lead, which proves that he is willing to risk all he has to win her, and the two marry. In the meantime, Antonio’s debt has expired but it appears his ships have sunk and so he can’t repay the debt. Although Portia has enough money to pay it off, Shylock demands his pound of flesh in front of the Duke of Venice. At the trial, Portia, disguised as a young lawyer, Balthazar, points out that the Jew can take the flesh, but not a single drop of blood. Shylock loses the trial and as a result he is obliged to convert to Christianity. Portia reveals her identity to Bassanio, and Antonio regains his wealth by the arrival of the ships he thought he had lost. IN ACTION

Source

Which is which?

The theme of the deal made with human flesh as security is found in many tales but Shakespeare’s most likely source was the version in Il Pecorone by the Italian Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, printed in 1558.

1 In the Old Testament God requires strict adherence to the law, with 613 rules dictating the life of the Jews in their daily life, moral behaviour and religious practice. The New Testament portrays a merciful God who offers salvation to those followers who are merciful and forgive their enemies. 1 What does Shylock conform to at the trial, the views of the Old or the New Testament? 2 In The Tempest Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, a duke usurped of his title and reign, feels compassion for the victims of her father’s anger. What does she conform to, the views of the Old or the New Testament?

Characters • Portia Portia’s beauty is revealed in Bassanio‘s words of praise for her, and she also possesses all the charm and tact that was expected from a woman of her lineage. She does not like the men who come to ask for her hand before Bassanio, but she is polite and tactful because they are noble and powerful. Her intelligence is best shown when she appears at Antonio’s trial disguised as a lawyer and finds a way to save his life without breaking the law. She uses the law in his favour and against an immoral contract, as behind the pretence of a pound of flesh what was demanded was a person’s life.

• Bassanio Bassanio is a gentleman of Venice, and a dear friend of Antonio’s. Bassanio may not be as good at business as Antonio but he wins Portia’s heart before the casket test, and his choice of the most modest one reveals that he has moral integrity. Moreover, his desire to help Antonio is sincere, though it is Portia who finds the way to end the trial in Antonio’s favour.

• Antonio Antonio is generous and never charges interest when he lends money. This makes him a sort of positive counterpart to Shylock, and also explains why the Jew is so determined to take advantage of Antonio’s decision to get himself into debt for his friend Bassanio and put his life at risk with the pound of flesh clause. Antonio has a quiet personality, and this makes Portia’s courage stand out even more.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

William Shakespeare IN ACTION

• Shylock

English in action

Shylock is one of Shakespeare’s first examples of how he can create a personality that follows the conventional stereotypes of the dramatist’s time – the Jew as a greedy moneylender – but at the same time go beyond that. Shylock is presented as a father, too, and most important of all he delivers one of the most powerful rhetorical speeches in Shakespeare’s production. His call for humanity is intense and seems to be in favour not only of the Jews, his people, but also of those who are not recognised as ‘human’ in the name of prejudice.

2 Choose the correct alternative. 1 security = garanzia / prova 2 moneylender = banchiere / usuraio 3 expire = rinnovare / scadere 4 to pay something off = saldare / prestare qualcosa 5 trial = processo / giudice 6 to be entitled = avere torto / diritto 7 to enact = promulgare / respingere 8 loophole = garanzia / scappatoia

Themes • Anti-Semitism and revenge Both prejudice and revenge are powerful but devastating forces in the play; prejudice surrounds the figure of Shylock, and creates barriers and divisions between the characters. As a Jew, Shylock deeply despises and hates Christians, while anti-Semitism is a common feature for all the Christian characters in the play. This reflects widespread anti-Semitism in England at the time. After Antonio fails to repay his loan, Shylock shows no mercy and most of the characters believe that this comes from his being a Jew. He wants to hurt Antonio because he feels he has been wronged by Christians and is entitled to seek revenge in response to their dehumanisation of Jews and the fact that his daughter ran away to marry one. Ironically, his refusal to show mercy and his insistence on the law being carried out is what leads to his defeat.

• Justice and mercy At the trial, Portia presents mercy as sweet, selfless and full of grace. After Shylock has refused Portia’s money and rejected her plea for mercy, in the role of Balthazar Portia finds a legal loophole to save Antonio: Shylock can have the flesh but not the blood of Antonio because the latter is not mentioned in the contract. Since there is no way to cut Bassanio’s flesh without drawing blood, Shylock has to give up. He ends up losing everything because Portia uses the force of the law against him. Antonio is merciful as he gives half of Shylock’s properties to Shylock’s daughter and her new husband, a friend of Bassanio’s. According to the mentality of the time, Shylock’s forced conversion will prevent him from practising usury in the future. In the end, mercy remains an ideal virtue that is not practised fully, either by Shylock, or any of the Christian characters in the play. This is one more example of how Shakespeare developed his play within and at the same time outside the general mentality of his time. MIND MAP

comedy

The Merchant of Venice

anti-Semitism

prejudice – revenge

justice vs mercy

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is the source of conflict in the play? 2 Why is Shylock unable to show mercy and why does he only seek revenge, according to the other characters? 3 Who is capable of real mercy in the play? ▶ A scene from the 2005

film version of the play

Ideas for your map: REVENGE/JUSTICE/MERCY

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Visual analysis

STEP IN

T12 Am I not human? 15 The Merchant of Venice

In this monologue Shylock makes his plea that his humanity is the basis for his revenge against Antonio, who has repeatedly offended and humiliated him.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

harm • the same • blames • imitate Shylock first (1) (2)

Antonio for the many ways and times the merchant caused him , and then explains how he intends to (3)

if Christians and Jews are (4)

the way of the Christians;

in many ways, then Shylock can also copy from them the art

of revenge. Now read the extract and check your answers.

Shylock He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated enemies—and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a 5 Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? 10 If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? 15 Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Shylock Mi ha disprezzato e deriso un milione di volte; ha riso delle mie perdite, ha disprezzato i miei guadagni e deriso la mia nazione, contrastato i miei affari, reso freddi i miei amici, infuocato i miei nemici. E qual è il motivo? Sono un ebreo. Ma un ebreo non ha occhi? Un ebreo non ha mani, organi, misure, sensi, affetti, passioni? Non mangia lo stesso cibo, non viene ferito con le stesse armi, non è soggetto agli stessi disastri, non guarisce allo stesso modo, non sente caldo o freddo nelle stesse estati e inverni allo stesso modo di un cristiano? Se ci ferite, noi non sanguiniamo? Se ci solleticate, noi non ridiamo? Se ci avvelenate, noi non moriamo? E se ci fate un torto, non ci vendicheremo? Se noi siamo come voi in tutto vi assomiglieremo anche in questo. Se un ebreo fa un torto ad un cristiano, qual è la sua umiltà? Vendetta. La cattiveria che tu mi insegni io la metterò in pratica; e sarà duro ma eseguirò meglio le vostre istruzioni.

(From Act III, Scene I) UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What offences does Shylock claim to have suffered because of Antonio? 2 Why has Antonio attacked Shylock, according to the Jew? 3 What does Shylock intend to do now? ANALYSE 3 Shylock’s rhetorical questions highlight the similarity between Jews and Christians. Choose from the list all the points they have in common. a

They have a body with the same features and weaknesses.

Their emotional lives are the same.

They are mortal.

They are victims of prejudice.

100

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

4 Answer the questions. 1 How does Shylock identify himself, and how does he present other people’s views of his identity? 2 How does Shylock make his questions rhetorically powerful? 3 How does Shylock justify his intention to take his revenge? INTERPRET 6 Shylock ironically hints at the ‘Christian example’. What is he being ironic about? DEBATE 7 Debate the statement in groups.

Revenge is legitimate if you are victim of injustice. Group A believe that you can take your revenge if a person you love is killed. Group B believe that revenge is always wrong even if you lose somebody you love. PDF

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William Shakespeare

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

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• Full plot • The three pigs and the three avengers • Hamlet in the bush • The hero and the foil From Hamlet DT9 Remember me (from Act I, Scene V)

IN ACTION Key words 1 The fool Read the quotes about the fool from various Shakespearean plays, and write a short description of this figure. “I am fortune’s fool.“ (Romeo and Juliet)

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.“ (As You Like It)

“Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes/That they behold and see not what they see?“ (Twelfth Night) “When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.“ (King Lear) 2 The three avengers The rule of three says that in writing a trio of events or characters is more humorous, satisfying or effective, as happens in the traditional story of the three pigs (the foolish one, the neither foolish nor wise one and the wise one). What is similar in Shakespeare’s plot?

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601) The classification of Hamlet is complex; it falls into the category of dark comedies/problem plays as its tone moves between dark, psychological drama and comic material. With Hamlet Shakespeare intended to surpass the model of the Senecan revenge tragedy. He developed a deep psychological study of Hamlet’s personality; he is full of contradictions that make him profoundly human. After his father’s apparently natural death, he feels alone and trapped in the court of Elsinore. When his father’s ghost reveals to him that Claudius, the new king and Hamlet’s uncle, murdered his own brother, Hamlet promises to avenge his father’s death. Soon after, he ‘plays the fool’ and it is never clear whether he pretends to be mad or is really going mad because of his isolation and the tragic secret he knows. Hamlet’s doubts, questions and hesitations fill the play.

THE PLOT The Danish court in Elsinore Castle is celebrating the marriage of the new King Claudius with Queen Gertrude, the dead king’s wife and Hamlet’s mother, and the suppression of the rebellion of Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway. Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, who orders the Prince to avenge his murder. Hamlet swears to take his revenge on his uncle Claudius and pretends to be mad; he plays the fool and insults Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter, though he loves her and she loves him. Claudius betrays his guilt when he watches a play representing his own crime; Gertrude admonishes her son for his lack of respect for his ‘father’, and Polonius, the king’s counsellor, spies on them. Hamlet kills Polonius believing he is Claudius, and is sent into exile. Ophelia goes mad after losing her father and drowns herself, while Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, returns from France seeking revenge for his father and sister. Claudius persuades him that Hamlet is responsible for the death of Polonius and Ophelia and they plot against the Prince. At a friendly fencing match Laertes uses a poisoned sword and Hamlet is offered a cup of poisoned wine for refreshment. Laertes wounds Hamlet, but the Prince seizes the poisoned sword and wounds Laertes. Both men are dying; Laertes confesses his betrayal and the Queen, who has drunk from the poisoned cup to celebrate her son’s first attack, dies. Hamlet stabs Claudius and forces him to drink the cup before the court. Before Hamlet dies in the arms of his only friend, Horatio, he names Fortinbras King of Denmark.

Sources Hamlet was probably written in 1601, on the basis of the Historia Danica of Saxo Gramaticus, translated into French by François de Belleforest in 1576, and a previous play, the so-called Ur-Hamlet, much simpler and much more violent than Shakespeare’s play.

Characters • Hamlet The son of old King Hamlet and Queen Gertrude, Hamlet has a complex personality which totally dominates the play. He can be moody, introverted and ironic, but also aggressive, scornful and cruel. He can be as vindictive as the traditional avenger of the Senecan tragedy, for example, when he rejects Ophelia, the woman he loves, or when he kills Polonius, Ophelia’s father. Occasionally he can be jovial and loving.

• Claudius The new King of Denmark, second husband of Gertrude and Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius is a murderer and a liar. He is cunning, lustful, and skilled at manipulating people through language and at organising disloyal plots, from pouring poison into his brother’s ear while the King was sleeping to preparing a mortal trap for Hamlet in the Prince‘s duel against Laertes. He is a politician whose only interest is his throne. 101

AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama

• Ophelia She loves Hamlet but it is her duty to obey Polonius, her father. He orders her to reject Hamlet, and she obeys; Hamlet feels betrayed and shouts at her. When her father is killed by the man she loves, her grief drives her to madness and she drowns herself while picking flowers near the river. It is Queen Gertrude who movingly reports her death.

• Gertrude IN ACTION Web quest

Hamlet’s inaction and the Oedipus complex For Sigmund Freud (1856– 1939), the founder of psychoanalysis, a boy may suffer from the ‘Oedipus Complex’: he unconsciously desires his mother and sees the father as a rival in love, and wishes to kill him. In Freud’s words, ‘It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father’. If unsolved, the complex may cause relational problems in the sphere of sexuality.

She makes Claudius the new King of Denmark by marrying him. She has no soliloquy and therefore her intentions in doing so remain unknown though both her former husband and son are sure she did it out of lust. She sincerely loves her son, and she knows that his father’s death and her ‘hasty marriage‘ (only one month after old Hamlet’s death) have tormented him. The fact that the dead King forbids Hamlet from harming his mother in any way might suggest that she had no role in the old King’s murder.

• Polonius He used to be the old King’s counsellor and after his death he serves Claudius; he is a servant of power, and everything he does is to please those who have it. He is a very good example of how the old do not understand the young, not even their own children: he criticises Laertes, his son, before he leaves, and has no consideration for Ophelia’s feelings. He talks to Hamlet to find out the cause of the Prince’s ‘madness’ (which Polonius believes is love); Hamlet easily makes fun of him.

Genre and structure • The revenge play The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd ( p. 64) had contributed to making the Senecan revenge play very popular with the Elizabethans; it was characterised by a revenge theme, a corpse-strewn climax (eight dead bodies in Hamlet’s final scene), ghosts, frequent moralising and bombastic rhetoric. All these elements are present in Hamlet, and Shakespeare amplified the effect by doubling the revenge plots (Hamlet’s and Laertes’), both concerning revenge for a dead father: Hamlet wants to avenge the dead King, Laertes his father, Polonius, and also Fortinbras intends to ‘avenge’ his father’s loss of territories for Norway.

• A play about and within the play The Murder of Gonzago, the play within the play, shows that drama can help find certainties and the truth among all hesitations and doubts. Hamlet also shows Shakespeare’s love of drama; Hamlet is happy only when a group of actors come to Elsinore. He is deeply moved as he watches a scene from Hecuba, offers the actors advice on how to play best and openly talks about the changing situation of public and private theatres in the Elizabethan Age. Last but not least, he uses a play, The Murder of Gonzago, to gain evidence of the King’s guilt.

Themes and interpretations Interpretations of Hamlet have varied through the centuries, and the Danish Prince has been represented in turn as a ruthless avenger, the instrument of justice and order, a man torn between moral conflicts, a young man oppressed by melancholy, a philosopher blocked by his excessive thinking, a Prince concerned about his corrupt kingdom, or a son inhibited by Freudian complexes.

• The avenger vs the instrument of justice and order

▲ Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864)

3 Search the web to discover what happens in Sophocles’ Oedipus, a Greek tragedy, which gave the complex its name, and why Freud thought that Hamlet suffers from the Oedipus complex. 102

The revenge is private and follows the law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, while justice is public, with a trial, a defendant, evidence, etc. The ghost of Hamlet’s father reveals to his son his ‘most foul and unnatural murder‘; a wicked brother (Claudius – Cain) killed a virtuous brother (Hamlet the father – Abel), and now Denmark is sick because of the original sin and of the incestuous union of Claudius and Gertrude. The play reflects the Medieval and also Renaissance view that the moral legitimacy of a ruler determines the health of the nation, and the Tudors’ concerns about the risk of civil war. Hamlet promises to avenge his father. However, he wanders around the castle lost in his thoughts and talking in riddles. Paradoxically he is a ruthless avenger only when he does not act, i.e. when he decides not to kill Claudius while he’s praying because the King would go to paradise if killed while praying, and Hamlet wants him damned. Moreover, Hamlet goes to the wrong side after killing Polonius, and this justifies his death in the end. However, in the duel Laertes gives evidence against Claudius, and Hamlet, the rightful

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

William Shakespeare Prince, punishes Claudius by death before the court. He is the instrument of justice and finally of order, because his last and only command as the dying King of Denmark is to name Fortinbras his heir, thus avoiding a civil war and restoring order and justice.

• The man of doubt and melancholy Hamlet hesitates, does not act, and contemplates the mystery of life, death, love and power in his seven soliloquies. He questions not only his own private revenge, but also the nature of man and his condition. His thoughts reveal what the Elizabethans considered the illness of ‘melancholy’ and which nowadays could also be interpreted as depression. For the Elizabethans, there were three types of men suffering from melancholy, and Hamlet is all of them. He is the Forlorn Lover because he feels that Ophelia has betrayed his love, he is the Political Malcontent because as a Prince he has lost his kingdom to Claudius and he thinks that Denmark is corrupted by Claudius’ evil influence. Most of all he is the Intellectual who reasons, but does not act.

• The man and woman of folly Hamlet’s language, full of riddles and puns, is typical of the Fool, a central figure in Shakespeare’s productions. It remains unclear whether Hamlet has lost his mind or is only pretending to be mad and so ‘playing the fool’ with his strange behaviour and nonsensical speech. Occasionally the Prince himself doubts his own sanity, but he also presents his behaviour as a trick to disguise himself from the eyes of Claudius, who never really believes in his folly. As Polonius tries to speak to Hamlet after his sudden change in Act II, Scene II, he comments on the Prince’s nonsensical riddles with the revealing words, ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t‘. Folly, or speaking like a fool, is also a way to speak unpleasant truths, unpleasant either to others or sometimes, in the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s behaviour as dominated by his sexual desire for his mother, to himself. Ophelia will join him in the role of the fool; she really loses her mind after her father’s death by the hand of the man she loves, and she will hand out flowers to all the members of the court, each corresponding to a particular trait of their personality. MIND MAP

dark comedy/ problem play

psychological study

revenge tragedy

revenge

Hamlet

play within the play

avenger vs instrument of justice and order

man of doubts and melancholy

man and woman of folly

drama and truth

supernatural

rhetoric

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What are the possible definitions of Hamlet as a play? 2 Which interpretations are possible for Prince Hamlet? 3 What do Ophelia and Hamlet have in common? 4 Who are the three avengers in the play? 5 What does The Murder of Gonzago say about the nature of drama?

▲ A modern film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play with Ethan Hawke (2000)

Ideas for your map: REVENGE/JUSTICE/FOLLY

p. 121

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

T13 Hamlet, the man of inaction 16 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

As Hamlet performs his most famous soliloquy, Claudius and Polonius stay hidden behind a curtain. They are spying on the Prince to try and find out more about his mental state.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

cowards • universal • questions • difficult Hamlet asks himself various (1)

which lead him to consider the essence of things,

dreaming, life, death and suicide. He considers these issues in (2) examples he makes can be related to his own (3) that all men are (4)

terms, though all the situation. He comes to the conclusion

, and fear prevents them from acting.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Hamlet To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles 5 And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; 10 To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub1: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause—there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. 15 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’unworthy takes, 20 When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn 25 No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution 30 Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

Hamlet Essere, o non essere: questo è il problema:

1 rub: metafora dal gioco delle bocce, qualsiasi ostacolo che devia il percorso della boccia. Il ragionamento di Amleto ‘inciampa’ qui;

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che sia nel pensiero più nobile soffrire i sassi e i dardi d’una crudele sorte, o tendere le braccia contro un mare d’insidie, e combattendo, porne fine? Morire: dormire; niente più, e col sonno terminare l’angoscia e i migliaia di lasciti della carne, condizione da accettare devotamente. Morire, dormire; dormire: forse sognare: ahi, qui sta il problema; perché in questo sonno di morte quali sogni possono venire quando abbandonata la mescolanza al groviglio mortale, ci ferma questo pensiero: è il dubbio che rende di così lunga vita tal miseria; chi sopporterebbe le fruste e le derisioni del tempo, le ingiustizie dell’oppressore, le insolenze dell’uomo orgoglioso, le pene dell’amore disdegnato, l’indugio della legge, l’arroganza dei poteri pubblici, le offese fatte ai pazienti dagli immeritevoli, quando uno, di propria mano, con un unico colpo, potrebbe porre fine alla vita col pugnale? Chi vorrebbe trascinarsi tali fardelli, brontolare e sudare sotto una vita affannosa, se quel timore di qualcosa dopo la morte, regione sconosciuta, dai cui confini non esiste viaggiatore che torni indietro, non scombinasse tanto la volontà, da farci preferire sopportare quei mali che già abbiamo, piuttosto che gettarci verso l’ignoto? In tal modo la coscienza ci rende vili: e così la tonalità originaria della decisione si scolora al riflesso pallido del pensiero, sceglierebbe, sembra, to die perché è to dream, ma il rub devia il suo ragionamento.

William Shakespeare

And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

e le imprese di grande vigore e momento, per tal ragione deviano corso, e perdono il nome di azione.

(From Act III, Scene I)

UNDERSTAND the name of action’. Is the soliloquy only about the two contrasting options life/death or are there other possible interpretations?

2 Answer the questions. 1 Hamlet is asking himself a question at l. 1. What two options does he consider? 2 What is similar to death? 3 What advantage could death and its image, sleep, bring? 4 What obstacles are there in sleeping, and in dying? 5 What characterises life? 6 Where are the evils of life to be found? 7 What could easily end man’s life? Give evidence.

4 Find some of the metaphors and metonymies. What do they add to Hamlet’s reasoning? Choose all the correct options. a

They make it more concrete.

They present life as a pleasant journey ending naturally in death.

They present death as a mystery.

They present life as dominated by sufferance.

They present man’s cowardice as an inevitable illness.

8 What convinces man to keep living through pain, evil and injustice? 9 What kind of people prefer life under these conditions?

WEB QUEST 5 Search the web for some versions of this soliloquy. Here are some suggestions from film adaptations with famous Shakespearean actors:

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

• Kenneth Branagh delivers the soliloquy aloud in front of a mirror.

1 Underline the questions that develop the soliloquy; are they about Hamlet only, or are they general?

• Laurence Olivier delivers the soliloquy partly as thoughts and partly aloud.

2 Hamlet debates two contrasting options from l. 1 to l. 10; does he come to the ‘rub’ as the consequence of his reasoning, or is it a new thought? Give evidence.

Which one do you prefer, and why? Prepare a short presentation about your favourite also including information about the performer.

• Richard Burton delivers the soliloquy aloud on a stage.

3 At the end of the soliloquy Hamlet says that great enterprises ‘lose PDF

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T14 Oh fair Ophelia! Oh wicked mother! 17 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN PDF

Just after delivering his soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be‘, Hamlet meets Ophelia; she has been instructed by her father Polonius and by Claudius to return Hamlet’s gifts. Claudius and Polonius hide in the room to spy on Hamlet and see if he is mad as he pretends to be, and if he is mad for love, as Polonius believes. Ophelia enters the room pretending to be reading from a book of prayers.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL Visual analysis LEARNING

dishonest • return • nunnery • faces • lies • denies Ophelia tells Hamlet that she wishes to (1) (2)

the gifts he has given her. Angrily, Hamlet

that he ever gave her anything; he asks her whether she is fair and then honest, and

laments that beauty is (3)

. He repeatedly tells Ophelia to enter a (4)

i.e. either to become a nun or to go to a brothel; rather than have children who will be sinners like him. When Ophelia (5)

to him telling him that her father is at home, he becomes more and

more aggressive. He criticises women, who make the world dishonest by painting their (6)

He leaves Ophelia after announcing quite enigmatically that there will be no more marriages and that all ▲ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

Hamlet and Ophelia (1866)

men but one will live as they are. Now read the extract and check your answers.

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Ophelia My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them. Hamlet No, not I; 5 I never gave you aught. Ophelia My honour’d lord, you know right well you did; And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed As made the things more rich: their perfume lost, Take these again; for to the noble mind 10 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind There, my lord. Hamlet Ha, ha! are you honest? Ophelia My lord? Hamlet Are you fair? 15 Ophelia What means your lordship? Hamlet That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. Ophelia Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? 20 Hamlet Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. Ophelia Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 25 Hamlet You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not. Ophelia I was the more deceived. Hamlet Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a 30 breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, 35 imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father? 40 Ophelia At home, my lord. Hamlet Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in’s own house. Farewell. Ophelia O, help him, you sweet heavens! Hamlet If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for 45 thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough 106

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

Ofelia Mio signore, ho qui con me vostri ricordi che da tempo volevo ritornarvi. Vi prego, riprendeteli. Amleto Non io. Non v’ho dato mai niente. Ofelia Vostro onore, voi ben sapete di avermeli dati; e accompagnati pure da parole spiranti tal profumo di dolcezza da renderli oltremodo più preziosi. Quel profumo è svanito. Riprendeteli. A cuor gentile anche i doni più ricchi si fan povera cosa, se chi li dona si mostra crudele. Eccoli, mio signore. Amleto Ah, ah! Voi siete onesta? Ofelia Monsignore? Amleto Siete bella? Ofelia Che intende vostra altezza? Amleto Che essendo onesta e bella, come siete, mai la vostra onestà dovrebbe ammettere che si parli della bellezza vostra. Ofelia Con chi potrebbe meglio accompagnarsi la bellezza, se non con l’onestà? Amleto Oh, sì! Ma la bellezza ha tal potere da far dell’onestà la sua ruffiana, più di quanto non possa l’onestà fare a sua somiglianza la bellezza. Questo un tempo pareva un paradosso, ma ora i tempi provano che è vero. Una volta vi amavo. Ofelia Mio signore, confesso, me l’avete dato credere. Amleto Non m’avreste dovuto prestar fede; ché non si può innestare la virtù sul nostro vecchio tronco e fargli perdere la sua natura. Io non v’ho mai amata. Ofelia Tanto più mi considero ingannata. Amleto Vai in convento. Perché ti vuoi fare procreatrice di peccatori? Anch’io son virtuoso abbastanza, e tuttavia mi potrei incolpar di tali cose, da pensar che sarebbe stato meglio mia madre non m’avesse partorito. Sono molto superbo, vendicativo, pieno d’ambizione, con più peccati pronti ad un mio cenno che pensieri nei quali riversarli, o fantasia con cui dar loro forma, o tempo sufficiente a consumarli. Che ci fa al mondo un essere così? Sempre a strisciare qui, tra cielo e terra? Siamo grandi canaglie, tutti quanti: farai bene a non credere a nessuno. Va’, va in convento. Vostro padre dov’è? Ofelia A casa, mio signore. Amleto Bada che sian serrate a lui le porte, ch’egli non esca a far lo scemo. Addio. Ofelia O potenze celesti, soccorretelo! Amleto Se ti mariti, voglio darti in dote questo pestilenziale ammonimento: puoi rimanere casta come ghiaccio, candida e pura come fior di neve, ma non potrai sfuggire alla calunnia. Perciò ti dico: vattene in convento. O, se proprio hai bisogno di sposarti, sposa uno scemo, perché quelli saggi sanno fin troppo bene

William Shakespeare what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, 50 and quickly too. Farewell. Ophelia O heavenly powers, restore him! Hamlet I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and 55 nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a 60 nunnery, go. Exit.

quali mostri sapete far di loro. Va’, chiuditi in convento. E presto. Addio. Ofelia O potenze celesti, risanatelo! Amleto Ho sentito che usate imbellettarvi. Dio vi ha dato una faccia, e vi mascherate. Quando camminate andate ballonzolando, sculettate, bamboleggiate a destra e a manca, chiamando coi nomignoli più strani le creature di Dio. e fate passare la vostra sfrontatezza per ignoranza... Va’, ne ho abbastanza. È questo che m’ha fatto uscir di senno. Io dico che è passato il tempo dei matrimoni; quelli già sposati, tranne uno, vivranno; gli altri resteranno come sono. Va’, vattene in convento. Esce

(From Act III, Scene I)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What three topics does Hamlet talk about, and who do they centre on? 2 From the start the two lovers know they are not alone, but neither talks about that. When does Hamlet lose control? 3 How many times does Hamlet bid Ophelia farewell, as he wanted to leave each time, but couldn’t? ANALYSE 3 Hamlet speaks in riddle-form as he considers the relationship between beauty and honesty and so the nature of deception. What does he really mean? Choose all the correct options. a

eauty inevitably corrupts honesty: my mother’s honesty was B corrupted by Claudius’ lust and she became dishonest to her dead noble husband.

▲ A scene from the 1990 film adaptation directed by Franco Zeffirelli starring Mel Gibson and Helena Bonham Carter.

S top pretending you are honest. You will never be a bride. All women are whores, go where you belong.

ou will live a life of chastity and perfection and I will honour you Y with my love. I am indifferent to your destiny; you can be a nun or a whore, in any case you are no longer mine as you are deceiving me.

eauty corrupts honesty: my beloved Ophelia lets herself be used B by her father and my uncle to spy on me. She is being dishonest to me and using her beauty to deceive me.

ll women are false and deceiving, and use their beauty to deceive A men.

eauty and honesty are like twin sisters and always come together B in women.

6 Hamlet’s final riddle is about married people. He knows that his words are being heard by Polonius and especially Claudius, so he can’t speak openly. What does he mean? a

4 Not only women but also men are presented as deceivers. What does Hamlet mean? Choose all the correct interpretations.

ll married people will live but one: Claudius. I will avenge my A father and kill him.

All married people will live and remain faithful to their spouses.

All married people will die but one: Claudius.

ll men are knaves who lie and deceive: I am not honest myself as I A am proud, vengeful and ambitious.

ll men are knaves who lie and deceive: my uncle is not honest and A has deceived my father and my mother because of his ambition.

All men are deceivers; also the ghost and Horatio are telling me lies.

5 Another issue that torments Hamlet’s spirit is revealed in the pun ‘get thee to a nunnery’ and all his words concerning chastity, marriage and prostitution; a woman that no man has had yet, a woman that is for one man only, and a woman that all men can have. How can his words to Ophelia be interpreted? Choose all the correct options. a

P rotect yourself from men’s falsity. Be a nun and give up love for men. Be chaste. Do not breed children.

7 Hamlet speaks as a fool. What truth is he uttering? INTERPRET 8 How would you feel if you had ‘lost’ (either physically or emotionally) as many people dear to you as Hamlet has so far? 9 Discuss Hamlet has been accused of misogyny as he mistreats Ophelia and accuses her of falsity. Is the accusation valid? Divide into two groups and debate the accusation.

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StoryTelling Ophelia and I The heroine and the model •

18 Read and listen to this impossible interview by journalist Tony Scott with Elizabeth Siddal, the model of Ophelia’s painting by John Everett Millais.

Tony Good evening from Tony Scott with your favourite programme, Impossible Interviews. I’ve got a scoop for you today! Directly from the year 1852, here’s Elizabeth Siddal, the model of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia! Welcome, Elizabeth. First question, when and how did you meet John Everett Millais?

Elizabeth It was about four years ago, in 1848. I already knew a couple of artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, like Walter Deverell and Gabriel Rossetti.

Tony The Pre-Raphaelites rejected the art of the Renaissance and looked back to 14th-century art, to the artists before Raphael and Michelangelo, am I right?

Elizabeth Yes, that’s right. They were fascinated by medieval art. It was Walter Deverell who introduced me to Millais. I am an artist myself and showed him my drawings, he found them interesting. Some time later he told me about his project of painting Ophelia. He was looking for a model… Tony And you were perfect for him, weren’t you?

Elizabeth (laughing) I suppose so… I accepted his offer. It wasn’t easy. Initially Millais was quite nervous. He was looking for an appropriate dress for Ophelia, but he couldn’t find one. Then one day he called me and showed me this antique embroidered dress… Well, it was beautiful! I put it on, and it suited me. The next day I went to Millais’s studio and I saw that tin bath in the middle, full of water. He told me to wear Ophelia’s dress and lay down in the bath. Every day I put on the wet dress and lay half-submerged for hours… Tony Unbelievable! Did you heat the water? In Victorian times there was no electricity… Elizabeth Millais put little candle lights underneath the tub… But he was always so absorbed in painting that he often forgot to change the candles when they went out. I caught pneumonia and it took me long time to recover! Anyway, it was an amazing experience. I loved being able to personify such a tragic character… Tony Why do you think Ophelia’s image is still so popular? Elizabeth Well, much of Ophelia’s appeal lies in her tragic destiny. She’s a young, beautiful noblewoman who is going to marry her fiancé, Prince Hamlet. But Hamlet goes mad and rejects her. We learn about her death not from Hamlet but from his mother, Queen Gertrude. We can just imagine Ophelia leaning on a willow tree on the riverbank when suddenly the branch she is on breaks. Ophelia falls into the water and drowns… Youth, heartbreak, death. That’s very romantic, isn’t it?

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The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

Elizabeth Siddal (1829–62) was an English model, artist and poet. She was the most popular of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as she personified their ideal of female beauty. She became famous as a model at the age of 19 when she posed for John Everett Millais‘ painting Ophelia (1852). In 1860 she married Dante Gabriel Rossetti – who depicted her in almost all his women portraits – and died two years later. She was only 33. ▲ John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1852)

Tony Yeah, it sounds so tragic! However, despite Ophelia’s death taking place off stage (Shakespeare doesn’t give us any further description of it), artists have always been attracted by Ophelia’s image.

Elizabeth Well, the absence of any further clue stimulates the artist’s fantasy. The artist can use his/her imagination more freely.

Tony Uhm, I see... One last point. In Millais’ painting beauty and death seem to be interwoven. The beauty of the girl and of the flowers around somehow reflect the sadness of death…

Elizabeth Yes, that’s true. Millais has not just painted a girl’s tragic death, he has made Ophelia and her death look beautiful!

STEP 1

LISTENING •

STEP 2

19 Listen to Laertes and Gertrude talking about Ophelia’s drowning.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING • Choose one of the following tasks. Work with a partner or a group. Task 1: Pairwork What would Hamlet and Ophelia have written/told each other in a WhatsApp/Instagram chat? Write their dialogue in a text message imagining the conversation between this young, unhappy couple. Task 2: Groupwork Hamlet and Ophelia have just parted. What would each have thought? Shoot two videos, one of Hamlet and one of Ophelia talking about what feelings they are experiencing and what they intend to do. The group should choose the two protagonists, write the script for each of them, have the protagonists learn their parts, shoot the videos.

AI ACTIVITY

Ask an AI chatbot to be Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Interview her preparing questions about her love for Hamlet, the reason why she decided to commit suicide etc. Do not forget to tell your AI assistant to speak in the first person. Take note of ‘Ophelia’s answers’ and be prepared to share them with the class.

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Renaissance drama LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full plot • Witchcraft and King James

PDF

From Macbeth DT10 The dagger scene (from Act II, Scene I) A tale told by an idiot

IN ACTION Key words

Witch hunting Witch hunting afflicted Europe from the 15th century, when the idea that witches venerated the devil began to take hold; in the 1590s, King James VI of Scotland (who became King of England as James I in 1603 p. 59) feared that witches were emissaries of evil all plotting to kill him, the emissary of God, and this created panic. In Scotland, between 1590 and 1662, about 2,500 people, most of them women, were tortured until they confessed they were witches, and then killed.

Macbeth (1606) This short play examines the force of ambition and the attraction of evil. The three witches and their prophecies pose the question of the relationship between man’s free will and prophecy. The play is also a political discourse as it presents the murder of Duncan, the King of Scotland, and the resulting devastation.

THE PLOT Macbeth and Banquo, two noble thanes of King Duncan’s army, meet three witches and hear their prophecy: Banquo’s children will one day be kings and Macbeth will become thane of Cawdor and then king. King Duncan of Scotland names Macbeth thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is persuaded by his wife, Lady Macbeth, to kill Duncan while he is sleeping. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth frame King Duncan’s dead servants as the murderers. Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, leave the country to save their own lives. Macbeth is crowned King and has his friend Banquo killed. Macbeth goes again to the three witches, who tell him three more prophecies: the only person he needs to beware of is Macduff, Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill, and no man born of a woman will ever be able to kill him. Lady Macbeth goes mad; in the end she commits suicide. Macbeth is attacked by a coalition of Scottish and English nobles. They carry branches from the trees of Birnam Wood to hide their advance on Dunsinane castle and so the forest comes to Dunsinane Hill; Macduff, who was born by caesarean section, kills Macbeth. Malcolm, Duncan’s son, is restored to the throne of Scotland.

Sources The main source is Ralph Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587). Other minor sources were Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), and Daemonologie, written in 1597 by King James I. The King believed in witchcraft, and the supernatural plays a significant role in the tragedy.

Characters • Macbeth Macbeth’s moral scruples make him suffer and at times bring him near to madness, for example when he sees a floating dagger, ‘a dagger of the mind‘, before committing Duncan’s murder. Once he has overstepped the line, his moral scruples and his own horror at ‘the deed‘ (i.e. murdering Duncan in his sleep) disappear and what is left is a cynical man who feels nothing when his wife commits suicide. His suffering, cynicism and final stoic acceptance of his solitary end all contribute to his role as a tragic hero.

• Lady Macbeth At first Lady Macbeth appears ambitious, brave and indestructible, and criticises her husband for his moral scruples and hesitations. She becomes queen as she desired, but the murder seems to tear the couple apart. She knows less and less of her husband’s plans and later she becomes a sleepwalker. She walks around rubbing her hands to wash the blood away, a blood that only her mind can see, as only Macbeth’s mind could see the floating dagger. In the end she kills herself. ▲ Public hanging of witches in Edinburgh, 1678

1 Answer the questions. 1 What does the expression ‘witch hunting’ mean today? 2 Does its current meaning have anything in common with witch hunting in 15th century Europe? 110

A political play; king and usurper, order and chaos The play celebrates the glory of the first Stuart, James I (the former King of Scotland p. 59), in the veiled form of Duncan and it upholds the Renaissance concept of an orderly world guided by the benevolent will of the king. Regicide, the assassination of the king, causes chaos in nature with storms, disturbed animals, earthquakes, darkness and other bad signs, and amorality in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Themes • Witchcraft and prophecy The beliefs about witchcraft of the Jacobean Age are reflected in the three witches, who speak

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

William Shakespeare

amorality

in rhyming couplets, while all the other characters in the play speak in blank verse or prose. The witches‘ language is mysterious and otherworldly. As the Birnam Wood and ‘no-born-ofwoman‘ prophecies make clear, their prophecies are riddles in the classical understanding of prophecy: the choice of the oracle was to be interpreted and interpretations depended on the recipient’s will and understanding.

comradeship

• Ambition, fate and free will

riddle

greed

casualty

The play traces the path of Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s greed and ambition. Macbeth’s rise to power causes his downfall and the destruction of his moral integrity. Lady Macbeth’s path is antithetical to his in moral terms; she moves from the role of the antagonist corrupting Macbeth’s ‘innocence’ to a guilt-ridden casualty of her husband’s and her own ambition. The witches represent the force of destiny. However, how that destiny happens is a matter of man’s own choice, or ‘free will’. It is Macbeth’s ambition but also his own moral weakness that make him accept his wife’s suggestion to murder Duncan, and it is his interpretation of the witches‘ words that leads to his ruin. Similarly, Lady Macbeth makes her own choices step by step, until her insanity makes her ‘disappear’.

IN ACTION English in action 2 Match each word (1–5) with its definition (a–e).

a friendship among people b a strong desire to have something c a victim of an accident or disaster d an expression that needs to be deciphered e lack of moral guidelines in behaviour

Style and symbolism Almost all the play is written in blank verse with the exception of the witches’ lines, which use rhyming couplets. The play shows the complete transformation of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, which happens at great speed. The central metaphors of the play – darkness, night, blood and sleeplessness – are all connected with ‘the deed‘, Duncan’s bloody assassination that takes place in a sleepless night for the two murderers. Another power symbol are clothes, which stand for royal power and are too big on short Macbeth.

MIND MAP

tragedy

relationship Macbeth/Lady Macbeth

witchcraft and prophecy

Macbeth

ambition

fate – free will

downfall and cynicism

blank verse

clothes

imagery

darkness

blood

sleeplessness

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What sources can be identified for Macbeth? 2 Why is Macbeth a political play? 3 What themes are present in the play? 4 What changes about the language of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the play? 5 What metaphors are present in the play?

T15 I have done the deed 20 Macbeth

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

Macbeth kills Duncan as he is sleeping in his room, while Lady Macbeth waits outside after she has made the guards drunk. Macbeth comes out of Duncan’s room carrying two bloody daggers, and tells his wife how he killed Duncan and the two guards. 111

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

frightens • criticises • disturbed • knock • white • daggers Lady Macbeth meets her husband as he comes out the King’s room. Macbeth’s conscience is (1)

Ideas map: p. 203 by whatfor he your has done. His POWER/AMBITION/FOLLY wife (2) his lack of firmness and sees

that Macbeth has brought the (3)

with him. Lady Macbeth brings the daggers back

into Duncan’s room and puts blood on the King’s servants. A first (4)

is heard. She returns

to her husband and shows her hands, now as red as his, and claims that they will be easily made (5)

again with a little water. Another knock (6)

them, followed by two

more. Now read the extract and check your answers.

Macbeth I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise? Lady Macbeth I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak? 5 Macbeth When? Lady Macbeth Now. Macbeth As I descended? Lady Macbeth Ay. Macbeth Hark! 10 Who lies i’ the second chamber? Lady Macbeth Donalbain. Macbeth This is a sorry sight. Looking on his hands Lady Macbeth A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. 15 Macbeth There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried ‘Murder!’ That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them: But they did say their prayers, and address’d them Again to sleep. 20 Lady Macbeth There are two lodged together. Macbeth One cried ‘God bless us!’ and ‘Amen’ the other; As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. Listening their fear, I could not say ‘Amen,’ When they did say ‘God bless us!’ 25 Lady Macbeth Consider it not so deeply. Macbeth But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ Stuck in my throat. Lady Macbeth These deeds must not be thought 30 After these ways; so, it will make us mad. Macbeth Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, 35 Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast; – 112

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

Macbeth È fatto! Hai udito dei rumori? Lady Macbeth Una civetta ed il cantar dei grilli. Eri tu che parlavi? Macbeth Quando? Lady Macbeth Adesso. Macbeth Mentre scendevo? Lady Macbeth Sì. Macbeth Odi anche tu? Chi è che dorme nella stanza accanto? Lady Macbeth Donalbano. Macbeth Oh, miseranda vista! (Guardandosi le mani insanguinate) Lady Macbeth Che stolta idea ti fa dire così? Macbeth Uno è scoppiato a ridere nel sonno, l’altro gridò sì forte: “All’assassino!”, che si sono svegliati l’un con l’altro. Io stavo lì, immobile, in ascolto, ma quelli han biascicato una preghiera e si son subito riaddormentati. Lady Macbeth Eh, già, dormono insieme in quella stanza. Macbeth Uno ha gridato: “Dio ci benedica”, e l’altro gli ha risposto con un ”Amen”, come si fossero visti a fronte me, me e queste mie mani di carnefice. Ed io, assorto nelle lor paure, non son riuscito a biascicare un “Amen!” quando hanno detto “Dio ci benedica!”. Lady Macbeth Non ci pensare troppo. Macbeth Ma perché non fui buono a dire un “Amen”? Ne avevo, in quel momento, un gran bisogno; ma quell’”Amen” mi s’è strozzato in gola. Lady Macbeth Non sono cose da prender così, altrimenti s’arriva alla pazzia. Macbeth M’è parso inoltre d’udire una voce che mi gridava: “Più non dormirai! Macbeth ha ucciso il sonno”; è l‘assassino del sonno innocente, il sonno che ravvia, sbroglia, dipana l’arruffata matassa degli affanni, ch’è morte della vita d’ogni giorno, è lavacro d‘ogni affannosa cura, balsamo d’ogni ferita dell’animo, secondo piatto nella grande mensa della Natura, nutrimento principe al banchetto dell’esistenza umana.

William Shakespeare Lady Macbeth What do you mean? Macbeth Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor 40 Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.’ Lady Macbeth Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. Go get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. 45 Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go carry them; and smear The sleepy grooms with blood. Macbeth I’ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; 50 Look on’t again I dare not. Lady Macbeth Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: ‘tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, 55 I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; For it must seem their guilt. Exit. Knocking within Macbeth Whence is that knocking? How is’t with me, when every noise appals me? 60 What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas in incarnadine, Making the green one red. 65 Re-enter Lady Macbeth Lady Macbeth My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white.

Lady Macbeth Che intendi dire? Macbeth “Più non dormirai!” gridava quella voce, in tutta casa; e ancora: “Glamis ha scannato il Sonno, e perciò Cawdor più non dormirà, non dormirà più Macbeth!” Lady Macbeth Ma chi era, a gridare in questo modo? Animo, animo, nobile Thane! Tu, facendo così, disfibri la tua tempra generosa con questi dissennati pensieracci. Va’, procurati subito dell’acqua e lava questo sporco testimone dalla tua mano. Ma questi pugnali, perché portarli via dal loro posto? Và, riportali là, e con del sangue imbratta quei due servi addormentati. Macbeth No, no, là dentro non ci torno più. ll solo ripensarci, a quel che ho fatto mi mette addosso un’immensa paura Non oso più veder quello spettacolo. Lady Macbeth Uomo senza fermezza Dammi qua quei pugnali; un uomo morto e un uomo addormentato son fantasie. E il diavolo dipinto spaventa solo l’occhio dell’infanzia. Se ancora sanguina, io con quel sangue imbratterò le facce dei due servi, e saran loro due e nessun altro ad apparir gli autori del delitto. Escono. Bussano dall’interno Macbeth Che colpi sono questi?....Da chi vengono?... Ma che diavolo mi sta succedendo, che il minimo rumore mi raggela? Che sono queste mani?... Ah, mi strappano gli occhi! Potrà mai il gran mare di Nettuno lavar dalle mie mani questo sangue? No, ché sarà piuttosto questa mano a tinger del suo rosso le variegate acque degli oceani e far del loro azzurro tutto un rosso. Rientra Lady Macbeth LADY MACBETH Le mie mani han lo stesso colore delle tue; ma mi vergogno d’avere in petto un cuore così bianco.

(From Act II, Scene II)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Who prays? Who is unable to pray?

4 Macbeth fears he has killed sleep the moment he killed Duncan: what does he mean by that? Choose all the correct options.

2 Why does Lady Macbeth refuse to talk about the murder?

e will never be able to sleep easy in his bed as his conscience will H torment him for killing an innocent man who had placed his trust in him.

S leep is nothing but a mere show of peace and its end will not alter his situation.

T here will never be any peace on earth as he has killed the King, the source of all order and balance in the natural world.

3 How does Macbeth describe sleep? ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Who seems more perturbed and shocked between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? Give evidence. 2 Nature revolts after Duncan’s death. How would this have been interpreted by Jacobean audiences? 3 How are sleep and prayer associated in Macbeth’s words? 4 How do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth see the blood and water?

INTERPRET 5 Husband and wife have planned together Duncan’s murder, and in their respective roles they kill him. Do they still appear united in this scene? PDF

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RIGHTS FOR ALL

Shakespeare’s women claim their independence

AGENDA 2030

In Shakespeare’s time women had little independence; they were expected to submit to all the men in their lives, whether they were their fathers, husbands or brothers. However, Shakespeare portrayed many powerful female figures in his plays, whether as the result of his personal beliefs or as a form of captatio benevolentiae to one of his most powerful watchers, Queen Elizabeth I. WHOSE WORDS ARE THESE? 1 Read the presentation of some female characters from Shakespeare’s plays, and match the quotes (A–E) to the characters (1–5).

114

Juliet Capulet

Hermia

Juliet is a young teenager and to a certain extent Romeo and Juliet is about her teenage rebellion. As a woman she is expected to make a good marriage that will be advantageous to her family. Instead, she marries her family’s enemy. She is very smart and practical; as a Capulet she immediately understands what a problem it is for her to love Romeo, a Montague. She is neither shy nor modest; she speaks just as much as Romeo and with the same degree of confidence, and even dares to look forward to her first night in bed with Romeo as her husband. She takes control of her own destiny instead of allowing her life to be controlled by others.

Despite the oppressive forces she constantly endures, Hermia is bold, unafraid, and determined to be with the man she loves and who really loves her (and not simply idolises a woman). She runs away with Lysander into the magic forest, but she does not conform to the stereotype of the woman succumbing to her lover and refuses his sexual advances. Most importantly, she knows that loving is not idolising and gets angry when Lysander, under the effect of the magic juice, falls in love with Helena. That love simply cannot be true.

▲ Claire Danes as Juliet

▲ Emma Carroll as Hermia

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age

Portia

Portia is wealthy, beautiful and clever. She is obliged to follow what her father stipulates about her marriage in his will, but she does not happily accept the fact she can’t choose her own husband. She manages to follow the rules and be a free spirit at the same time. This is most true in her bold initiative to disguise herself as a man and defend Antonio against Shylock’s malice. She does not break the law but she knows that there is more than the law itself – mercy and love; and if mercy is not accepted, she will make the law work for her and her friends, and not against them.

▲ Prunella Scales as Portia

B A

Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe topful Of direst cruelty!

C My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door, Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more.

D I know not by what power I am made bold, Nor how it may concern my modesty, In such a presence here to plead my thoughts; But I beseech your grace that I may know The worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

E Before you venture for me. I could teach you How to choose right, but I am then forsworn. So will I never be. So may you miss me. But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. 4

Ophelia

Lady Macbeth

Before her father’s murder, Ophelia appears naïve despite the fact that she knows what to be loved and love means; she has received gift from Prince Hamlet, and accepted his courtship, but she obeys her father’s order to reject Hamlet and follows his orders without any question. She is a rather quiet character, manipulated by all the men at court, until she is ‘released’ into madness by the shock that follows her father’s assassination. At that time her language and behaviour changes completely and she appears almost insolent, protected as she is by her folly. Her song speaks about men making love with women and then abandoning them.

Lady Macbeth is stronger and much more ambitious than her husband, at least at the start. She is a sexually attractive woman who asks the spirits to ‘unsex her‘ and fill her with cruelty. She challenges her terrified husband after Duncan’s murder and shows him her hands red with blood. The violence she has chosen as her mode of assertion does not help her to fully develop her potential as a woman; she loses herself in remorse and while sleepwalking she rubs her hands to clean them of imaginary blood. She may suffer from some form of OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.

▶ Kate Winslet as Ophelia

▶ Tara Fitzgerald as Lady Macbeth

PROJECT 2 Organise a communication campaign focusing on Goal 5 in your community. Step 1 Gather information on the specific targets of Global Goal 5 Gender equality, and take notes.

• Audience: Who is the material you will prepare aimed at? • Content: What themes do you want to focus on?

Choose one thing to do, and prepare your material for Step 2 a communication campaign focusing on your objective. Prepare an action plan which includes:

• Campaign materials: What kind of materials do you intend to prepare? Slogans, articles, information sheets, posters, videos (either digital – PowerPoint presentation, Instagram stories, Prezis, etc. – or tangible – brochures, billboards, etc.)?

• Objectives: What are you trying to achieve with your material? (Inform, convince, engage, etc. the target audience.)

Present your action plan to the rest of the class with at least one sample of the campaign materials.

Ideas for your map: GENDER EQUALITY

p. 121

115

AUTHORS AND WORKS Jacobean poetry

John Donne (1572–1631)

LEARNING DIGITAL J ohn Donne and Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets PDF

From Songs and Sonnets DT11 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

IN ACTION

Profile

Which is which?

Donne was an unconventional man and writer, brilliant and passionate. Before his marriage he lived a wild and licentious life in London, making a name for himself for his passionate love poems. His devotion to his wife was deep and sincere, as proved also by the fall in fortune that his marriage caused to his career; the intensity of his feelings regarding both her and God is the most significant feature of his poems, combined with his cleverness and ‘wit’ (mental ingenuity). He is considered the founder of the Metaphysical school ( p. 68), a group of poets who attempted an argumentative type of poetry, with allusions to all branches of learning. Whether he was writing an erotic poem such as The Flea, a love poem like The Sun Rising or a sacred sonnet such as Batter My Heart, the speakers in Donne’s works present a claim or command which they defend and validate throughout the rest of the poem, and which triumphs in the conclusion. From 1593 to 1601 he wrote Songs and Sonnets, a collection of love poems, and, after 1614, Holy Sonnets, a collection of religious sonnets. His works circulated only in manuscript among his friends and were published posthumously in 1633. He was a wonderful speaker; his sermons were incredibly popular with the worshippers at St Paul’s and presented his powerful style, at the same time both emotional and logical.

1 Read the following lines from Donne’s poems. Which is a paradox, which a pun, and which a conceit? Why? 1 (speaking of lovers as a pair of compasses) If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.

2 (speaking to Death) And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

3 (speaking to God, and thinking of his wife’s and his own surname, More and Donne) When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more.

English in action 2 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to validate a claim = to present / prove the truth of an idea 2 to make a name for oneself = to become popular / rich 3 to have a fall in fortune = to improve / worsen one’s position 4 to place emphasis on = to consider something unimportant / important 116

Themes The love poems in Songs and Sonnets are all actually songs but Donne names them sonnets as sonnets were poems especially dedicated to love. He presents love in different ways, sometimes as a pure ideal, sometimes cynically, and sometimes as a purely sensual, erotic experience. Donne attempted to shock and amuse the reader with his witty and realistic attitude towards love; courtly love disappears, in favour of an egalitarian and realistic relationship between two souls, passionately loving each other in both body and spirit. Donne’s relationship with his wife and also his licentious life before meeting her may have been essential in his choice to present love in terms totally unlike the conventions of sonneteering. The themes of the religious poems in Holy Sonnets are love of God, the immortality of the soul, death and faith; the poems reveal a vigorous faith in God. Donne also uses the language of passionate love when he addresses God, whom he often sees as a lover. Similarly in the love poems he elevates his lover to the dignity of an equal companion with whom he can share all, from a night in bed to complex reasoning about the nature of love.

Language and style Donne’s love and religious poems are similar in their use of dramatic openings; a speaking voice addresses a listener (the lover or the reader) and the immediate effect is that of vivid speech. He made wide use of extended ‘conceits’, long unusual comparisons in which he matches two apparently dissimilar things, and also of puns and paradoxes.

The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1572 KEY FACT John Donne was born in London into a recusant (a Roman Catholic) family.

1583 He was educated at Oxford and (possibly) Cambridge; he left both without a degree, as he refused to promise loyalty to the King, which was necessary for graduation.

1592 He entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law, but he never completed his studies. He travelled in Italy and Spain.

1601 KEY FACT He secretly married Lord Egerton’s niece. He was briefly imprisoned because she was a minor. He lost his position and they struggled with illness and poverty for many years.

1597 He became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.

1602 He converted to Anglicanism.

1615 Upon James I’s order he took holy orders.

1617 His wife died. He continued publishing sacred poetry, and also some of his famous sermons.

1621 He became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, where he preached until his death.

1633

• Songs and Sonnets (posthumous) p. 118

WORKS

1640

Sermons (posthumous)

• Holy Sonnets (posthumous)

He places particular emphasis on the spoken language and rejects conventional forms in poetry as inappropriate for his inner conflicts. His poetry thus becomes ‘dramatic’ in the sense that it exploits the immediacy, the broken expressions and even the exclamations typical of drama. Neoclassicists like Samuel Johnson (1709–84) and John Dryden (1631–1700) condemned his style and the whole Metaphysical school as exaggerated; their poetry was appreciated again thanks to the Modernist poet T.S. Eliot ( 394). MIND MAP

wild life

great speakers – sermons

John Donne

metaphysical poet

wit

Songs and Sonnets

Holy Sonnets

passionate love poetry

religious poetry

conceits, paradoxes, puns dramatic openers spoken language

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–8) to its correct half (a–h). 1

John Donne was born in London in 1572 into

After travelling to Italy and Spain, he lived

He secretly married his patron Lord Egerton’s niece, who was only 16 and

He wrote Songs and Sonnets, Holy Sonnets and,

He developed an argumentative type of poetry; his speakers present

In Songs and Sonnets love is presented

In Holy Sonnets the themes are love of

In all his poetry Donne uses

a extended ‘conceits’, long unusual comparisons in which he matches two apparently dissimilar things, and also puns and paradoxes. b was consequently imprisoned for marrying a minor. c in different ways, sometimes as a pure ideal, sometimes cynically, and sometimes as a purely sensual, even erotic, experience. d in the last decade of his life, sermons. e a claim or command which they defend and validate throughout the rest of the poem, and which will triumph in the conclusion. f God, the immortality of the soul, death and faith. g a Roman Catholic family, but converted to Anglicanism in 1602 to become the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. h a wild and licentious life in London.

2 Answer the questions. 1 What kind of personality did Donne have?

4 What was the reputation of Metaphysical poets over the centuries?

2 What characterises his sermons?

5 What type of poems did Donne write?

3 What school of poetry did he found?

6 What characterises his style?

Ideas for your map: LOVE/RELIGION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Jacobean poetry LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

T16 The Sun Rising 21 Songs and Sonnets

The Sun Rising is an original variation of the aubade, a poem usually characterised by the bitter sweetness that lovers feel at dawn when they are reluctant to separate after spending the night together. In this poem the sun, an unwelcome intruder, wakes up Donne and his beloved, most probably his wife, in their bed. The sun is admonished for its impertinence in disturbing the perfect lovers.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

bed • blind • daily routine • annoyed • more powerful • riches • warm The poet is (1)

with the sun because it disturbs him and his lover in their

(2)

. Instead of waking up the lovers, it should call other people to their

(3)

. The poet is (4)

than the sun; If he wanted he could wink and hide

it, but he wants to keep seeing his lover in their bed. Also the poet’s lover is more powerful than the sun as she could (5) all the (6) (7)

the sun with her eyes if she wanted. According to the poet, and powers of the world are in his bed with his lover. The sun should the lovers and shine on them, and so be everywhere.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Busy old1 fool, unruly2 sun, Why dost thou3 thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? 5 Saucy4 pedantic wretch5, go chide6 Late school boys and sour prentices7, Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices8, Love, all alike9, no season knows nor clime, 10 Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags10 of time.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Is this a question or an order?

2 Who should go and attend to their daily routine?

Thy beams11, so reverend and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink12, But that I would not lose her sight so long; 15 If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late, tell me, Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine13

1 Busy old: il sole è “busy”, affaccendato, perché illumina il mondo tutti i giorni, e “old” perché lo fa dall’inizio dei tempi 2 unruly: dissennato 3 dost thou: do you 4 Saucy: impertinente 5 wretch: disgraziato 6 chide: sgridare 7 sour prentices: apprendisti in

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The Renaissance and the Puritan Age – Authors and works

erba 8 country... offices: le formiche dei campi (i contadini) alle fatiche del raccolto 9 all alike: sempre uguale 10 rags: stracci 11 beams: raggi (Che gli oggetti sono visibili all’occhio umano per la luce che cade su di essi era una delle recenti teorie

scientifiche al tempo di Donne.) 12 I... wink: potrei eclissarli e velarli con un battito di ciglia 13 th’ Indias... mine: le Indie delle spezie e le mie/delle miniere; “mine” è un pun con un doppio significato (Donne si riferisce alle esplorazioni geografiche alla ricerca delle spezie e dell’oro.)

John Donne Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, 20 And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay. She’s all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy. 25 Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus. Thine age asks ease14, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; 30 This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere15.

14 asks ease: esige riposo 15 thy sphere: Donne fa riferimento al sistema Tolemaico, che vede la terra

al centro di una serie di sfere concentriche. Il sole è la sfera più esterna e più grande, nonché la più vicina a Dio,

3 If she is all states and all princes, what remains of the world?

4 Is the room really a sphere?

motore immobile. Nel mondo rimpicciolito dove l’amore regna sovrano, la sfera del sole è la stanza degli amanti.

▶ A view of John Donne’s bust outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 The apostrophe usually gives importance to what it addresses. How does the poet use it with the sun, instead? 2 The poem develops three conceits; what area is each centred on? 3 Underline the pronouns that the poet uses to talk about himself and his lover. Are they presented according to the standard of courtly love as the ideal woman and the desperate lover?

INTERPRET 4 Donne knew about the latest discoveries in astronomy of his times ( p. 68) but in the poem he refers to the Ptolemaic system. Why do you think he preferred it? 5 Donne joins heart and brain to celebrate his intense love. Do you prefer his way of celebrating love, or Shakespeare’s in his sonnets ( p. 78)?

4 Is their love a spiritual or a physical reality, or both? 5 Write the rhyme scheme of each stanza. What is the function of the couplet?

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119

2T HE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE KEY WORDS THINKING SKILLS

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share 1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Agree on a short definition for each. 2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words for each point, or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class, in groups or with a classmate. Describe 1 The Anglican Reformation began under Henry VIII and was completed under Elizabeth I. 2 Public theatres were dramatically functional buildings. 3 The Elizabethan audience were mixed and appreciatsed drama. 4 There are four phases in Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist. Explain 1 The 1588 victory against Spain reinforced Elizabeth’s role at home and in Europe. 2 The Renaissance brought about a new vision of man and the arts. 3 Shakespeare’s plays debate the main issues of his time in critical terms. 4 Romeo and Juliet highlights the contrast between the old and the young. 5 The Metaphysical poets renewed the language of poetry. 6 Milton’s Paradise Lost celebrated the Puritan cause. Justify 1 Faustus is an overreacher dominated by ambition. 2 Hamlet is a problem play. Compare 1 Justice and revenge are central to both The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. 2 Ambition causes the downfall of both Faustus and Macbeth. Assess 1 Charles I’s autocratic reign caused the Civil War (1642–49). 2 The art of sonneteering was not lyrical. 3 Shakespeare’s female characters are independent strong-willed women. 4 Shakespeare rejected the prejudices of his time, though not openly.

STORYTELLING

WRITING

3 Write your imaginary interview with Shakespeare about one of his male/female figures; you want to know how he came to create him/her, his/her desires, motivations and interests, and if he believes that he gave him/her justice in the play. 4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay highlighting similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence: • Shakespeare’s interpretation of love poetry in his sonnets • The nature of love in Shakespeare’s plays • The desire for power as a corrupting force • Shakespeare’s debate of justice, revenge and mercy • The role of magic and dreaming in Shakespeare’s plays • The power of drama and illusion in Shakespeare’s plays • Donne’s interpretation of love poetry in his poems • The epic conventions in Milton’s poem

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IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE PURITAN AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

illusion / imagination

power kingship / censorship

exploration / colonisation

religion / truth / mercy

revolution / rebellion

love / family relations / reconciliation

ambition / heroism / death

poetry / art

justice / gender equality

revenge / folly

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme of power. Step 1

Read this short analysis of ‘power’:

Many believe power is granted to a person by someone else. They see power as a position or title, which comes with authority and control, and a belief in the form of supremacy over others. Others believe that each individual has the power to cultivate it by themselves. Real power is influence, and it increases as we offer more support to others. Being powerful is more about giving support than getting support. Service is the highest form of leadership. Serving others is a key to sustainable growth. Step 2 Focus on the idea of power in its different facets, and discuss them in groups. Are your views similar or different? Step 3

Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view.

2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about power. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links between the different subjects. English Portrait of Elizabeth I of England in her coronation robes Greek The Histories (Polybius, c. 150 BCE) How Ancient Rome became a world power

Spanish Fuenteovejuna (Lope de Vega, 1619) The struggle between those in power and those without

German Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (Martin Luther, 1529) The power of God against the evils of the world

Latin On the Republic (Cicero, 54-51 BCE) The ideal form of government for ensuring justice and liberty

Italian Il Principe (Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532) Princes and royals are instructed on how to handle their power

French Essays (Michel de Montaigne, 1580) No political power is superior to the liberty of the individual

Art Germain Le Mannier, Portrait of Catherine of Medici (1547-59) Philosophy Republic (Plato, c. 375 BCE) The ideal government

Portraiture celebrates the power of the Medici 121

THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE (1660–1776) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Social life

THINKING ROUTINE 1 There are many ways to interact with people in business. Choose from among the following ways the one that appeals to you the most when you think of your future working life. Explain why it is the best for you. • working with the same colleagues every day • working remotely all the time • working remotely and occasionally meeting colleagues at the company’s site • working in a common space (co-working) and meeting new people there 2 Look at the pictures and answer the questions. The co-working environment 1 What are the people doing? 2 What kind of atmosphere is there (quiet, lively, dull, exciting, boring, etc.)? Why? 3 Do you think these people are also looking for social interaction by choosing a co-working space? Interior of a London Coffee House 4 What are the gentlemen doing?

Interactive analysis

5 What kind of atmosphere is there (quiet, lively, dull, exciting, boring, etc.)? Why? 6 What might the gentlemen in the coffee house be talking about? Which is which? 3 What does social interaction at work involve? Tick all correct options. 1

cooperation among people

competition among people

considering a person’s role in a group

considering the dynamics of group behaviour

accepting or refusing leadership

Key words • business = any activity that defines a person’s occupation • coffee house = a space where businessmen met for information and work • leisure = an activity that is done for pleasure • co-working space = where workers from different companies share a working space 122

▲ The co-working environment The former Royal Bank building in Quebec, Canada, is now a co-working space with a café for people to relax and interact. A co-working space is a place that remote workers can use to work in a quiet environment outside the home. They are also used to connect with colleagues or meet new people. They often host freelancers, entrepreneurs and university students working or studying with their laptops over an espresso. These places offer a convenient, well-equipped space, quiet and busy at the same. Co-working environments aim at being inclusive and diverse, and they help satisfy a basic psychological need: the sense of belonging, i.e. the need to connect and be accepted in a group while giving and receiving support.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping in texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors Depth-in bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ Interior of a London Coffee House (c. 1690–1700), Unknown English artist About 2,000 coffee houses operated in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were information centres and forums for discussion and debate. In 1773, James Boswell – the biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson – was looking for a book and he was advised to visit a nearby coffee house, the ‘Chapter House’. There, Boswell discovered pamphlets, books and bound volumes of newspapers. With just a shilling a year members had access to the Chapter House’s papers and books, for reading or quick consultation.

Ideas for your map: WORK/SOCIAL INTERACTION

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HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Key Facts The Restoration and the Augustan Age

LEARNING DIGITAL • The Restoration • The Glorious Revolution • The Bill of Rights • The Jacobite rebellions • The War of the Spanish Succession • The War of the Austrian Succession • The Seven Years’ War • The Act of Union PPT PDF

The Restoration and the Augustan Age: History and Society History narrated: The Restoration and the Augustan Age ( Digital resources, Study Booster) Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians

IN ACTION Key words 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which of these powers makes the laws (A), which executes them (B) and which intervenes when the laws are not respected (C)? • judiciary power: • legislative power: • executive power: 2 Which of these political systems is present in today’s society? • Absolutism there is one single, unified source of unlimited but not tyrannical political power • Liberal democracy it includes rule of law and the separation of the three powers

1660-1688

1689

1689-1702

THE RESTORATION

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF PARLIAMENT

Charles II was invited by Parliament to return to England as its legitimate monarch. There was a renewed interest in culture, music and science, and the king gave the name of Royal Society to the scientific society for the development of experimental science. During his reign the Great Plague (1665) killed almost a quarter of London’s population and in 1666 the Great Fire of London burnt down all of medieval London. Charles II died without any heirs and his brother James II (1685– 88), a Catholic, became king. He continued the autocratic policy of his brother. It was hoped that one of his Protestant daughters, Ann or Mary, would ascend the throne after his death, but a son was born to the king in June 1688.

• Dictatorship there is one single, unified source of unlimited tyrannical political power English in action 2 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to burn down / off a place 2 to rise to prominence = to become less / more important 3 to inherit a son / title 4 the outbreak of a conflict / an alliance

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Key Facts

The fear of a Catholic heir convinced seven peers to summon William of Orange, Mary’s husband and the Protestant ruler of the Netherlands. He marched on London, where he was acclaimed as King by a convention of Lords and MPs (Members of Parliament). On 28th January 1689, William and Mary became joint monarchs by the will of Parliament, not by divine right.

In 1689, the Bill of Rights laid the foundations of a constitutional monarchy in England; it gave Parliament legislative power, while leaving, though with specific restrictions, executive power in the hands of the monarchy together with the Ministers. The process of reinforcement of institutions continued with the Act of Settlement in 1701: under the Act of Settlement anyone who became a Roman Catholic, or who married one, could not inherit the throne.

1702-14

QUEEN ANNE

The Augustan Age covers the reigns of Queen Anne (1702–14), Mary’s sister and the last Stuart monarch, and the first two Hanoverian kings, George I (1714–27) and George II (1727–60). The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) saw England enter the conflict and rise to prominence as a European commercial power. In 1707 Scotland and England became one country with the Act of Union. The age saw the birth of political parties: the Whigs were non-conformist, and did not want absolute power of the monarchy while Tories were supporters of the royal divine right, and of the Anglican Church. Both parties offered intellectuals literary patronage. Private and literary clubs were opened, along with public coffee houses, which became the real centre of social life. In 1714, Queen Anne died with no heir.

1714-27

1727-60

THE OFFICE OF PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET

George I, the Elector of Hannover, a small German state, came to the throne according to the Act of Settlement of 1701 with the support of the Whigs: he could not speak English and chose one minister as an intermediary between the Cabinet (the Council of Ministers) and himself. With time this minister became the Prime Minister; the first was Sir Robert Walpole, a Whig; the house he was granted at 10 Downing Street, London was to become the official London residence of all future prime ministers. Walpole’s policies were moderate: he was against military spending and in favour of lower taxes and increasing exports. In 1715, James Edward Stuart, son of the dethroned Catholic James II, unsuccessfully tried to recover the English throne during the first Jacobite rebellion.

THE FIRST GLOBAL WARS AND COLONIAL EXPANSION George II’s reign saw the outbreak of several conflicts: the War of the Austrian Succession, (1740– 48) about the title of Emperor, the second Jacobite rebellion led by Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). Britain and its allies were defeated in the War of the Austrian Succession but it won the Seven Years’ war, thus gaining most of New France in North America, Spanish Florida, some individual Caribbean islands in the West Indies, the colony of Senegal on the West African coast and superiority over the French trading outposts on the Indian subcontinent. The commercial expansion was, in part, also due to the slave trade and to colonial trade. However, poverty, squalor and disease were widespread. Charity schools for the children of the poor were widely promoted, and in 1750, John and Charles Wesley founded Methodism, a movement which promoted piety and morality.

Ideas for your map: POWER/RELIGION/WAR/EMPIRE

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RIGHTS FOR ALL

The English Bill of Rights (1689)

AGENDA 2030

The main principles of the Bill of Rights are still in force today. Apart from the separations of powers, it established the principles of frequent Parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech within Parliament – a legal immunity for MPs known today as Parliamentary Privilege. It also included no right to introduce taxation without Parliament’s agreement, freedom from government interference, the right to petition and just treatment of people by courts. The English Bill of Rights was a model for the American Bill of Rights (1791), which ratified the first ten Amendments of the American Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and the rights of peaceful assembly and petition. In this extract from the English Bill of Rights, the choice of a sovereign is no longer due to succession rights or bloody battle for power between two contenders, but the result of the choice of the representatives of the people.

And whereas the said late King James the Second having abdicated the government, and the throne being thereby vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange (whom it hath pleased Almighty God to make the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the lords spiritual and temporal and divers principal persons of the Commons) cause letters to be written to the lords spiritual and temporal being Protestants, and other letters to the several counties, cities, universities, boroughs and Cinque Ports, for the choosing of such persons to represent them as were of right to be sent to Parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon the two and twentieth day of January in this year one thousand six hundred eighty and eight, in order to such an establishment as that their religion, laws and liberties might not again be in danger of being subverted, upon which letters elections having been accordingly made. And thereupon the said lords spiritual and temporal and divers principal persons of the Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representation of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindication and assertion of their ancient rights and liberties declare: 1. That the pretended power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament is illegal. 2. That the pretended power of dispensing with the laws, or the execution of law by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal. ▲ Closeup of the middle portion of the English Bill of Rights of 1689

CHECK OUT

DISCUSS

1 Find where in the extract it says:

2 Answer the questions.

1 how the representatives describe their role.

1 What critique does the Bill of Rights make of James II’s reign?

2 what limitations are imposed on royal power.

2 What past document in English history may the extract refer to with reference to ‘ancient rights and liberties’?

3 what the representatives should guarantee. 4 who has abdicated. 5 who has been called by letters to choose their representatives in Parliament. 6 who will be the new King of England.

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WEB QUEST 3 Search the web for Parliamentary Privilege and the right to petition. What do they involve in the UK and in your country today?

Ideas for your map: POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

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ACROSS TIME Scotland and England, AND SPACE a long and difficult marriage The Act of Union of 1707 merged England and Scotland into the single state of Great Britain, and created a single Parliament at Westminster, but little thought had been given to how the union would actually work in practice and whether the union would be a happy one. The issue was dramatically renewed in time and it surged again after the Brexit referendum. After Scotland and England were legally united in 1707, it was soon clear that the small, distant bureaucracy in London was not equipped to manage either the collection of taxes or the maintenance of internal order in Scotland. Two key factors complicated its internal administration. One was the prevalence of Jacobitism in the Highlands and parts of Lowland Scotland which posed a threat, at times grave, to the internal stability, not just of Scotland, but of the British state as a whole. The other was the unpopularity of new taxes imposed in Scotland on basic commodities to bring them into line with those collected in England and the way in which tax officials enforced them. This led to widespread opposition, with frequent, violent attacks on customs officials. Perhaps some of the most enduring ill-feeling between the two countries came as a result of the English carrying out the Highland Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries. This involved English landlords brutally evicting their tenants to clear the land for sheep, cattle and mining, often burning houses to the ground.

As the world progressed towards what we know as modern politics, in 1934 the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) was formed. Whilst Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, there were many claims that she used Scotland for political experiments. Scotland lost one fifth of its workforce within the first two years of her time in office, as state subsidies were pulled from the mining, steel and textile industries. Neither was it popular when in 1989 the poll tax was introduced in Scotland a year ahead of England. In 1997, a referendum was passed which led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. While Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom, there have been calls for it to become independent once again. A referendum to regain this status was held in 2014, the result being 55% to 45% against independence. In the EU referendum in June 2016, on the issue of Brexit, Scotland voted by 62% to 38% in favour of Remain. But a request to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence as a result of the Brexit vote was rejected by Westminster in 2019.

◀ Edinburgh, Scotland, 1st April 2023. A March for Scottish independence organised by the movement Yes2Independence.

◀ This flag represents the regal union between England and Scotland, according to which the flag of England, a red cross on a white background, known as St George’s Cross, and the flag of Scotland, a white saltire (shaped cross, or St Andrew’s Cross) on a blue background, would be joined together, forming the flag of England and Scotland for maritime purposes.

PROJECT 2 Do the following tasks.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What two factors made Scotland difficult to govern after the unification in 1707? 2 What happened with the Highland Clearances? 3 Were Margaret Thatcher’s policies towards Scotland popular? 4 What were the results of the 2014 referendum for independence and of the 2016 Brexit referendum in Scotland?

Step 1 Search the web to understand what consequences the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) (2019), and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) (in force since 2021) are having on the Scottish/British economy. Step 2 P repare or choose some graphs to describe the economic situation of Scotland/the UK. Step 3 Look for opinions on social media which may help you to understand if Brexit is seen in a negative or positive light among Scottish/British people. Step 4 Make a poster with notes reporting the opinions you have gathered from social media. Step 5 Present your materials to the class.

Ideas for your map: INDEPENDENCE

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StoryTelling A glimpse of 17th–century London • Read the report of James Pollock, an ordinary old man from 17th-century England who witnessed unique events and changes in British society.

I was born in London in 1655 and I was ten when the Great Plague burst out there. We called it ‘The Black Death’, it was a form of bubonic plague spread by rats. The plague started in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Field – that was a very poor area, dirty and overcrowded. It started in the early spring of 1665 and soon expanded through the town and the surrounding areas. The plague killed more than 100,000 people, one fifth of the city’s population. I lost my father and two brothers.

Only my mother and I survived, and that was terrible! Then, a year later, in 1666, the city had to face another tragedy, the Great Fire of London. I remember the red flames high in the sky… I was fascinated but also scared, of course. I was only eleven! The fire accidentally started in the house of a certain Farriner and spread quickly; most houses were made of wood at the time. In the end over 13,000 houses were destroyed, about a quarter of urban London. But, well, I must say the fire was somewhat positive, as it helped stop the plague in those areas. In 1667 my mother and I moved to Russell Street, where she had found a job as a servant in the house of Will Unwin, the owner of Will’s Coffee House, one of the most popular coffee houses in town. Will gave us a room near his home and as he needed help in his coffee house I started working there. The pay was low, but I got enough food and coffee (of course!); it was a new drink, ‘black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love,’ as the old Turkish proverb goes. Coffee houses were a must at the time, not only for the dark non-alcoholic drink they offered (even Oliver Cromwell had encouraged them as coffee was a more respectable alternative to alcohol!). Did you know that they were called ‘penny universities’? That was because for one penny you not only got a cup of coffee but also plenty of knowledge. That was an incredibly lively

◀ Advertisement for Will’s Coffee House in 1700

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▲ London in the 17th century

STEP 1 period, the Enlightenment they called it! And coffee houses contributed to the diffusion of this new light. People (almost exclusively men, I’m afraid) met there to make commercial transactions, exchange information, debate on philosophy, science, politics, fashion, gossip or discuss current events highlighted in the newspapers that had just been invented. You could even spread subversive information. In fact, for some time coffee houses were perceived as sites of potential political unrest, where dangerous ideas might be swapped. The rumor goes that the 1688 Glorious Revolution (when King James II was peacefully replaced by William of Orange) was plotted in a coffee house! Discussions on the Bill of Rights in 1689 lasted for hours! Not forgetting literature… In the long years I worked at Will’s I met a number of incredible literati. Dryden (who was one of our most faithful customers) invented his heroic couplets in front of a cup of coffee. There, I listened to Swift satirise our politicians, heard Defoe reading extracts from Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders long before his novels were published! That’s why I always say that I went to university at Will’s Coffee House. I learnt a huge deal of things there and I’ll always be grateful for that. The light of culture and literature has made me a better man, it has turned me, a humble man, into a citizen, fully aware of his rights and of his place in the world.

FORUM DISCUSSION

Coffee houses were not popular among women as they were not considered places for respectable ladies. However, this didn’t stop men from spending much of their time there, preferring them to their homes. Women soon grew tired of the situation. In 1674 ‘The Women’s Petition Against Coffee’ was issued. The target of this satirical petition was not only the ‘abominable Liquor called COFFEE’ but also the social activity of coffee drinking. Talking, reading, and discussing in coffee houses was defined ‘an intellectual, effeminate pastime’ which made men ‘frenchified’. The immediate coffee drinkers’ answer to the petition was ‘The Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition Against Coffee’!

• Divide into two groups. Each group organizes a 17th-century forum of discussion between the two factions: - on one side women are blaming their husbands and fiancés for spending too much time in coffee houses; -o n the other side men are defending their right to stay away from home.

STEP 2

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Role-playing • Each group chooses the two protagonists who get ready to defend their position in a video debate. Video-making • Each group shoots the video of the debate and presents it to the class.

AI ACTIVITY Use Copilot or choose another similar AI software and enjoy trying to recreate a map of London in 1600 as it was before the Great Fire.

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL The Restoration Age PPT

The Restoration Age: Literature and Culture

The Restoration Age (1660–1714) The Restoration of the monarchy with Charles II marked the beginning of a radical cultural change characterised by a renewed interest in the arts and court life, most often characterised by immorality, vice and libertinism. The French model in taste, fashion, style and manners became the standard for excellence, and the strict Puritan world view was forgotten.

Restoration poetry Restoration poetry was characterised by realism, with a new interest in satire and the elegant perfection of poetry. John Dryden (1631–1700) best represented the love for neoclassical style in reaction and opposition to the complexities of the Metaphysical school ( p. 68); his heroic couplet became the dominant form in 18th-century poetry and deeply influenced Alexander Pope and his mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (1712). The conventions of the epic were adapted to social situations characterised by superficiality and vanity, with the intent of satirising the upper classes and their artificial manners.

Restoration drama

▲ Alexander Pope

In 1660 Charles II reopened the theatres, which had been closed by the Puritans in 1642. Following the model offered by France, going to the theatre became a fashionable activity for the aristocracy and the wealthy middle classes. Private theatres became more similar to modern theatres, with artificial lighting, scenery and the audience sitting inside in the dark. Women were employed for female roles, and actors were hired by contract for individual performances. At first, the dominant genre was the heroic play; it was modelled according to the conventions of the epic, with noble heroes, great adventures and elevated language. However, the audience looked for a lighter form of entertainment and preferred broad satire, farce and witty comedies. The most popular genre after 1680 was the comedy of manners, which satirised the manners and affectations of the nobility in clever dialogues; characters were common types with defects to be ridiculed and the witty atmosphere was more important than plot. The main influence was French, with Molière, a French actor and playwright; his satires mocked the affectations of his audiences. John Dryden wrote both heroic plays and comedies of manners and dominated the literary scene, which came to be known as the Age of Dryden. William Congreve (1670–1729 p. 142) wrote comedies characterised by clever comic dialogue, a satirical presentation of the war of the sexes, and an ironic analysis of the artificiality of his age. In The Way of the World (1700) the lovers Millamant and Mirabell try to obtain the permission of Millamant’s aunt for their marriage among jealousy, deceit, and intrigue. The dialogues are witty, with many puns and ridicule of the characters.

▶ The Drury Lane Theatre

at the end of 1700: the theatre in a ‘modern’ form.

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age – The Restoration Age (1660–1714)

IN ACTION

Non-fiction prose: diarists and philosophers

Key words

A new literary genre, the diary, developed thanks to John Evelyn (1620–1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) in impersonal tone and simple style. Their diaries are records, not of their private lives and feelings, but rather of places and events. Evelyn wrote a diary for almost all his life, recording such dramatic events of his time as the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell’s rise, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. Pepys kept his diary only for a decade; his entries are detailed and give readers one of the best insights into the Restoration Age. Prose writing developed also thanks to philosophers and their treatises; the works of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704 p. 136) put forward in clear prose new views concerning knowledge, religion and politics. For Locke the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa, while for Hobbes humans are only interested in survival and the maximization of their own pleasure. The idea of society as a social contract, however, contrasted sharply with the realities of actual societies.

1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to the corresponding meaning (a–d). 1

comedy of manners

diary

tabula rasa / blank slate

social contract

a an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate in some given form b record of facts and events c comedy with a carefully articulated plot d the consciousness as something created only by experience, with no innate qualities

▶ Une soirée chez Madame Geoffrin, painting by A.C.G. Lemonnier (1812)

MIND MAP

Charles II

Restoration Age

Restoration poetry

Restoration drama

French model

satire

reopening of the theatres

arts and court life

John Dryden – heoic couplet

heroic plays

Alexander Pope – mock heroic poetry

comedy of manners William Congreve, The Way of the World

non-fiction prose

diarists

philosophical essays

John Evelyn – Samuel Pepys

Thomas Hobbes – John Locke

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the notes in the table. Cultural significance of the Restoration

renewed interest in the arts and court life; immorality, vice and libertinism

Influence of French model Features of Restoration poetry Main features of Restoration drama and theatres Popular genres in Restoration drama Non-fiction prose 2 Answer the questions. 1 How different was Restoration poetry from the Metaphysical school, and who best represented the new forms of poetry?

3 Who contributed to the development of prose in the Restoration Age?

2 Who was the most popular dramatist of the Restoration Age?

Ideas for your map: ENTERTAINMENT

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE

The Augustan Age (1714–1776)

LEARNING DIGITAL • The Augustan Age • ‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator’ PPT

The Augustan Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

The Ancients vs the Moderns

PDF

Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock DT12 Belinda’s toilet DT13 The mortal offence

Literary models • The Classics

▲ Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche (1793).

It is regarded as a masterpiece of Neoclassical sculpture.

The Latin authors Virgil, Horace and Ovid were studied and imitated. Cato and his noble suicide, became a cult object as he represented the highest ideals of stoicism. The emperor Augustus was viewed as an ideal ruler, at the head of a powerful empire that the English were replicating in their own colonial expansion; Augustus and his friend Maecenas, an important patron for Augustan poets, became the model for literary patronage.

• The French The France of Louis XIV (1643–1715), the Sun King, and Louis XV (1715–74) offered the model of Neoclassicism of Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), of the works of the philosophers Voltaire (1694– 1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755), who helped to spread the ideas of tolerance, democracy and anti-slavery, and of the contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–80). The Encyclopédie or Classified Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Trades was a showcase for the Enlightenment and its ideas; it was the result of the effort of several contributors under the direction of Denis Diderot (1713–84).

Audience and style Most readers were from the middle classes and they appreciated clear and precise language. The spread of journals and circulating libraries helped to increase the number of potential readers among the urban middle classes. Neoclassical theories, with their focus on ‘clarity, precision, order, harmony and universality‘, also affected language, which became refined and elegant, clear and precise, in order to meet the requirements of commerce and science. The female reading public also increased since women of the upper classes had leisure time to read and were also admitted to the public coffee houses. They joined the debates concerning the issues of the time: their demand for education and information grew.

Non-fiction prose The growing importance of the middle classes and their need to be informed gave rise to journalism and essay writing.

• Journalism The first half of the 18th century was the ‘Golden Age of British Journalism’ with the rise and spread of the first periodicals and newspapers. The abolition of censorship in 1695 greatly contributed to the diffusion of newspapers. The two most important periodicals of the time were ‘The Tatler‘ and ‘The Spectator‘, published by Richard Steele (1672–1729) and Joseph Addison (1672–1719). 132

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In 1709, Steele decided to publish a newspaper not only with news about politics, but also fashion, entertainment and gossip from the clubs and coffee houses. Gradually, the paper started to cover issues of the day, such as duelling and gambling, and it discussed questions of good manners. Addison turned the paper into an instrument of literary and moral propaganda. ‘The Spectator‘ was strictly neutral between Whigs and Tories, and this obviously favoured a larger circulation. It was published daily, so that reading it became almost a habit, and it coincided with the rise of the new British middle class, to which it offered models of social and moral behaviour, written in a simple and clear language.

• Essay writing Addison and Steele were the first to make essay writing popular, and David Hume (1711–76) wrote many essays to spread his Empiricism, too. Hume believed that all our perceptions are either impressions or ideas. Impressions are more immediate and come either from sensation or from reflection. Ideas are instead copies of impressions, which remain in the mind when the impression passes.

Satire in prose and poetry

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each tool of satire (1–5) to its correct definition (a–e). 1

ridicule

humour

caricature

sarcasm

irony

a a mild form of irony b the deliberately distorted portrait of a person c the use of humorous or sarcastic expressions to mean quite the opposite d the ability to make someone or something the object of unkind laughter by mockery e a strong and savage form of irony Look and think 2 Answer the questions. 1 Do husband and wife look interested in each other? 2 What condition is the room in?

Horace and Juvenal were the two great Latin satirists chosen as models for two forms of satire, the former milder and humorous, and the latter stronger and bitter. Satire had a moral and didactic function and its frequent targets were women, hypocrisy and politics, with the controversies between the Tories and the ruling Whigs. Ridicule, caricature, irony, humour and sarcasm were all used in satire. In prose Addison and Steele provided good examples of Horatian satire in their civilised periodicals, but the greatest satirist was Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) with his Gulliver’s Travels, a radical example of Juvenalian satire. Another great satirist of the age was Samuel Johnson (1709–84), whose The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) imitates Juvenal’s satire. His name is above all associated with his immense contribution towards the compilation of the first Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Satire in verse was philosophical and elaborate, mostly written in heroic couplets. Poets aimed simultaneously at delight and instruction. The most popular form was the mock-heroic poem, which parodied epic poetry by applying epic formulas and heroic style to trivial subjects. The major models were John Dryden (England), François Rabelais and Nicolas Boileau (France), Miguel de Cervantes (Spain), and Alessandro Tassoni (Italy). The greatest satirist in verse was Alexander Pope (1688–1744). He was a public poet who exalted the great Augustan virtues of order, reason, nature, good taste, morality, and common sense. In the mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (1712) a young lady is offended when a lock of her hair is cut off and a ‘battle’ starts over the trivial offense. The poem is written in heroic couplets and structured as an ‘epic poem’, with such elements as the preparation of heroes for the battle, the description of weapons, the battle, or the descent into the underworld. With Pope, however, all these ‘epic’ elements are reduced to trivial and ordinary events.

Satire in paintings

3 The dog finds a lady’s cap (not the wife’s) in the husband’s coat pocket, while the lady’s posture indicates unfaithfulness on her part, too. What is the painter satirising here?

▶ William Hogarth, The Tête à

Tête, the second of six pictures Marriage A-la-Mode painted in circa 1743. This is an example of Hogarth’s satire of what happens when marriage is made for money by two fathers, a penniless nobleman who needs cash and a wealthy merchant who wants to buy into the aristocracy.

133

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Drama Royal patronage no longer existed and theatre directors had to compete on the market. They offered sensational operas according to the Italian style and with expensive scenic effects, or sentimental comedies that reflected the taste of the wealthy middle classes. The most popular plays were overtly moralising, as with Richard Steele’s (1672–1729) comedies. The most original playwrights were Irish; Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) and Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74). Sheridan resumed the tradition of the comedy of manners of the Restoration ( p. 130); The School for Scandal (1779) explores how people hide their real natures behind hypocritical masks, but it also shows that all wrong impressions are corrected and falsities unmasked in the end. Goldsmith’s most successful play was She Stoops to Conquer (1773); the comedy reflects the social stratification of the time and also the clash between generations. The plot is complex with the typical comedic elements of misunderstandings and mistaken identities. A very popular work was The Beggar’s Opera (1727) by John Gay (1685–1732). It is a ballad opera, a satire of the Italian opera so appreciated by audiences. It parallels the worlds of thieves, prostitutes, and crime bosses with figures of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie to criticise the inequality between the rich and poor and to reveal widespread hypocrisy. Marriage and love are presented in terms that were highly provocative for the age; a woman’s only use for marriage is financial security and once she is married she can be sexually free. Enlightenment reason – balance – order

Deism

the Latin Classics

the French

journals

circulating libraries

female reading public

‘The Tatler’ – ‘The Spectator’

Richard Steele – Joseph Addison

David Hume

Empiricism

Horace – Juvenal

women – hypocrisy – politics

ridicule – caricature – humour – sarcasm

heroic couplets – mock-heroic poem

middle classes taste

sensational operas

comedy of manners

ballad opera

literary models

middle-classes readers

MIND MAP

coffee houses

journalism

Augustan Age non-fiction prose

essay writing

satire

drama

Richard Sheridan, The School for Scandal Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer 134

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – The Augustan Age (1714–1776)

John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the notes in the table. Imitation of the original Augustan writers of Latin literature under Emperor Augustus

Augustan Age Values of the age Mostly imitated Classics Other models in France Encyclopédie of Sciences, Arts, and Trades Reading public Language Female reading public

2 Match each form (1–4) to its main features/representatives (a–i). 1 Journalism

2 Essay writing

3 Satire

4 drama

Empiricism

Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

politically neutral

‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator’

satire of the ballad opera

f avourite instruments: ridicule, caricature, irony, humour and sarcasm

Jonathan Swift with Gulliver’s Travels (prose)

Horace’s and Juvenal’s models

John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera

A Dictionary of the English Language

Oxford English Dictionary

• First published in

• Project begun in

(1) Johnson

by Samuel

of the dictionary of the (3)

well, particularly in comic strips. Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau, began in 1970 and continues in present-day

newspapers across the globe, was the first comic ever to

(9)

(10) • Complete edition published in

• Number of entries: (5)

• Planned time of completion:

• 1884: entries complete to

• Time of completion: (4)

In contemporary times, satire has found a place in visual art (0) as

with the (7) and (8)

• Following the example

Satire in contemporary times

(6) • Agreement reached in 1879

(2)

3 READ the text below, and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).

(2)

4 22 LISTEN to a short talk about the two most important dictionaries of the English language through history. Complete the table with a word, number or a short phrase. You will hear the listening only once.

• First attempt to standardise

FIRST

(1)

IELTS

(11) • Number of entries: over (12) in ten volumes

honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial

Cartooning (Trudeau), and has seen incarnations (3) a television special and even as a Broadway musical. During (4)

long history, the strip has satirised the education

system, government, politics, fast food, and other social issues, and has become well known (5)

its liberal slant. The satire

is presented not only with a humorous text but (6) visually; for (7) (8)

, president George W. Bush generally portrayed as an asterisk, which

symbolises the alleged emptiness of his head, and wearing a Roman military helmet, which symbolises his push for war in (9)

Middle East.

▶ Scene from a theatre representation of The Three Penny

Opera by German playwright Bertolt Brecht inspired by John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

Ideas for your map: SATIRE

p. 167

135

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL The novel PDF

• Samuel Richardson, Clarissa DT14 Clarissa’s death • Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy DT15 Tristram’s breeches

IN ACTION They said of this...

The first individualist in English literature It seems then that Robinson Crusoe, one of the myths of modern civilization, does not celebrate only the material triumphs of its society, and the strength of its rational will to conquer the environment: it also prefigures some of the spiritual loneliness and social alienation which this civilization has brought with it. Some of this loneliness is itself a reflection of a force which did much to build modern civilization – Puritan individualism.

The novel The novel and realism The Augustan Age marked the birth and dominance of the novel, which mirrored the middle class and their values; faith in the power of reason, individualism and self-reliance. Middleclass readers demanded a realistic type of fiction, based on sound moral principles of Puritan derivation: industry, economy, sobriety, moderation and modesty. Faith in God was a fundamental aspect of the bourgeois mentality, too. The realism of the novel was influenced by the ideas of René Descartes (1596–1650) and John Locke (1632–1704); for these philosophers the truth can be discovered by the individual through his senses. Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637) led to the modern assumption that the pursuit of truth is an entirely individual matter, independent of the tradition of past thought. For Locke, personal identity exists because a person’s consciousness lasts in time through the memory of their past thoughts and actions. This view is present also in the philosophy of David Hume (1711–76). The primacy of individual experience in the novel first appeared with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe ( p. 152), presented as a diary kept by the protagonist. The novel became a picture of life, realistic not only because of ‘what’ it presented but, above all, for ‘how’ it presented it. Time and place ceased to be vague concepts; clock time and physical setting were made tangible through the use of precise details, such as names of streets and towns, and certain communicating qualities, such as colour, size, solidity, extension and number, became of primary importance. Facts were recorded over time with great accuracy, signalling the exact date and year of such ordinary events as departures, shipwrecks, marriages, new acquaintances, etc. The same attention to realism was given to characters, no longer mythological or fantastic, but similar to real people with actual names and surnames; and a new type of protagonist developed: practical, self-made and self-reliant, endowed with common sense and prudence, the opposite of the heroic adventurous hero of medieval romances.

The rise of the novel The demand for fiction was increased by the improved economic conditions and better education of the middle classes, by the possibility of borrowing books through circulating libraries, and by the introduction of the ‘serial method’: books were sold in monthly instalments at a low price. Each novelist gave a specific contribution to the development of the novel. • Aphra Behn (1640–89 p. 148) was the first woman writer to make a living out of her profession. In 1688 she published Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave, the story of the enslaved Oroonoko and his love, Imoinda. The novel was extremely successful at the time and is today considered the first anti-slavery novel. • Daniel Defoe (1660–1731 p. 150) laid the foundations for the Realistic novel, based on firstperson narration and accurate presentation of facts as shown in his major works, Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722).

(From Ian Watt, Defoe As a Novelist, 1960)

1 Answer the questions. 1 Is Watt’s view of the novel Robinson Crusoe totally negative or totally positive? 2 Do you recognise yourself in the vision of a world dominated by loneliness, alienation and individualism? 136

▲ David Hume

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – The novel

▲ John Locke

• Jonathan Swift (1667–1745 p. 158) was the bitterest satirist of his age; he ridiculed the politics, conventions, institutions and customs of the British world, and criticised the exaggerated enthusiasm for rationalism. His masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is not only a satire, but also a sort of anti-utopia. • Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) used the epistolary form in his works and introduced the plot, and psychological characterisation. His psychological understanding of the feminine mind led him to write the first European bourgeois novels, or novels of manners, Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–59).

IN ACTION Key words 2 Realism has many different meanings. Match each with the area it belongs to. 1

political realism

philosophical realism

artistic realism

a Universals or abstract concepts have an objective or absolute existence. b What matters is power, and not matters of principle. c The detailed depiction of nature or life without no added beauty.

MIND MAP

reason and individualism

realism

pictures of life

• Henry Fielding (1707–54) adopted an elaborate, mock-heroic style combined with frank, open humour. He found a model for his comic epic novel in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605). The protagonist of his work Tom Jones (1749) is a reckless young man on the road. Fielding was the first to use a third-person narrator. • Laurence Sterne’s (1713–68) Tristram Shandy (1759–67) is an anti-novel; he rejected sentimentalism, the traditional chronological and realistic description of ordinary events and presented a series of memories based on association of ideas and conversations with no plot. He broke all logical links between episodes, interrupted the narration with continuous digressions, wrote an ‘open’ work without a beginning or end, produced unpredictable characters and introduced non-communicating dialogues long before modern experiments in 20th century novels.

adaptation of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

The novel

middle-class audience

serial method

novelists

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Samuel Richardson, Pamela

Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

anti-slavery novel

realistic novel

satire – anti-utopia

novel of manners

comic epic novel

exact details real characters

▲ Scene from the 1963 film

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

anti-novel

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–4) to its correct half (a–d). a a precise time and setting and life-like characters, who were practical, self-made and self-reliant. 1 The novel mirrored b the middle classes and their world view; faith in the power of reason, individualism and self-reliance.

he modern realism of the novel was based T on the idea that

The novel was realistic with

c better education of the middle classes, by the possibility of borrowing books through circulating libraries, and by the introduction of the ‘serial method’.

he demand for fiction was increased by T the improved economic conditions and

d truth can be discovered by the individual through his senses, as shown in René Descartes’, John Locke’s and David Hume’s theories.

2 Write short notes about the main contributions that Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne made to the creation of the novel. Include main works with dates of publication.

Ideas for your map: REALISM

p. 167

137

THE ARTS

Living in mansions but enjoying nature

AGENDA 2030

In the Georgian era, the reigns of George I, II, III and IV (1714–1830) classical style and proportions became the norm in Palladian architecture, from the 16th-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, whose example reached England through the Scottish architect Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–25), a monumental collection of engravings of houses in Palladian style. The typical Georgian building is the country house, standing alone in its own landscaped park. This is also the period that saw the first steps towards a coherent approach to town planning. Terraces and garden squares of more modest town houses are one of the most important architectural legacies of the Georgian period. By the 1760s, tastes began to change and new original styles appeared, from the medieval Gothic of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, to the ‘Chinoiserie’, as seen in the Indian-Chinese-Egyptian Brighton Pavilion, designed by the Prince Regent’s favourite architect, John Nash.

Villa Capra, or la Rotunda (Vicenza), built between 1567 and 1605 by Palladio.

Chiswick House, Chiswick district (London), built in 1729 by Lord Burlington. This neo-Palladian villa was built as a Roman-style temple for the art collections inside.

Marble Hill House, Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham (London), begun in 1724. It became the model not only for many English mansions but also for ‘plantation houses’ in the American colonies.

138

The Restoration and the Augustan Age

The Royal Crescent (Bath, south-west of England), built between 1767 and 1774. It consists of a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in an arch known as a crescent.

The Royal Pavillon (Brighton, south coast of England), built between 1787 and 1823. The Pavillon has wonderful gardens and exquisite interiors. THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. 1 Do these buildings include a natural area – park or garden? What do you think these areas were for? 2 Do you think these great mansions were affordable by the lower classes? Were they allowed entrance? Web quest 2 The great mansions of the past offered their residents a rare combination of artificial and natural beauty, but they were only for a few affluent people. Look at the Vertical Forest in Milan, and search the web to find out its structure, purpose and costs. Is modern sustainable architecture affordable to everyone?

Strawberry Hill House, Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham (London), begun in 1747. Its style anticipated the 19 -century Gothic revival. th

Vertical Forest (Bosco Verticale), built between 2009 and 2014. It is a pair of residential towers in the Porta Nuova district of Milan, Italy.

Ideas for your map: SUSTAINABILITY

p. 167

139

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Do we care about our cities? Fumifugium (1661)

AGENDA 2030

by John Evelyn LIFE

WORK

• John Evelyn (1620–1706) was an English writer, gardener and diarist. • The many volumes of his diaries provide insight into life and events at a time before regular magazines or newspapers were published. • Evelyn’s work covers art, culture and politics.

John Evelyn’s tract Fumifugium showed early awareness for the need for sustainable development. He admired the well-planned neoclassical architecture of cities that he had visited in Italy and France. London appeared dirty and undignified to him in comparison; in his opinion, industry was the source of air contaminants, as industries relied on large, coal-powered fires to produce their products, which sent numerous particles into the London air. His solution was first, to move industries from the city to the countryside, and secondly, to surround London with gardens to protect it from any scents of smoke or chemicals.

T17 Proposals for a sustainable development 23 It troubles me that the health and happiness of so many people should suffer from the greed of a few in a city that contains enough to make its people the happiest on Earth. Money has blinded people to the thing which keeps them alive and which can, for their own sake, be improved so easily. True happiness can only be achieved through a cheerful and healthy life, not riches. Non est vivere, sed valere vita: It is not to live but to be strong in life. It seems 5 absurd that men, who owe their lives to air, are not able to breathe it freely, but instead are allowed to live in misery. The people of London are haunted in their daily business by a dreadful smoke that causes many health problems. And yet they do nothing. It fills me with righteous indignation that this glorious and ancient city, which could rival Rome itself in grandeur, and whose influence can be felt from India to the furthest stretches 10 of this world, should choose to engulf itself in clouds of noxious smoke and sulphur. In particular, attention needs to be paid to the overly extravagant, misshapen and congested buildings, and to the streets which, like a labyrinth, are narrow and hard to use in the busiest areas. The uneven paving and excessive guttering that soaks the streets after rain must also be addressed; the monstrous piles of wood, coal, boards and other coarse materials which 15 clutter the beautiful and noble areas of the city ought to be removed to the riverside, before being transferred to the areas that need them. Additionally, embanking the river would reduce erosion on the London side, making it both healthier and more useful. These are the problems which our great city contends with every day. CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What was the cause of the degradation of London? 2 What put the health of London’s citizens at risk, and how did they react? 3 What problems of urbanisation does the writer identify? 4 What solutions to the problems are presented? 5 Which aspect(s) of Evelyn’s analysis from among the following is/are not outdated in your view? • The law of profit ruling economic development. • The poor conditions of London in terms of sanitation. • The need for urgent measures to restore good conditions for the inhabitants’ health. • The apparent indifference of Londoners to the state of the city. WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to see if the city of London was plagued by smog after 1691, and if any solution was found to the problem.

140

The Restoration and the Augustan Age

The Water Will Come (2017)

by Jeff Goodell LIFE

WORK

• Jeff Goodell (1959) is an American journalist and author whose writings focus on energy and environmental issues. • Goodell has dedicated much of his career to sounding the alarm on the climate crisis.

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, focuses on how two of the effects of climate change, hurricanes and rising sea levels, are threatening national security, causing environmental degradation with far-reaching implications. The book opens as a ‘cli-fi’ (climate-change-inspired dystopian science fiction), set in Miami in 2037 after the town was hit by a terrible hurricane.

T18 After the hurricane 24

1 manatee: tricheco 2 surge: ondata 3 soggy: fradicio 4 Zika and dengue: virus portati da zanzare infette 5 hatched: covavano 6 mortgages: mutui

After the hurricane hit Miami in 2037, a foot of sand covered the famous bow-tie floor in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. A dead manatee1 floated in the pool where Elvis had once swum. Most of the damage came not from the hurricane’s 175-mile-an-hour winds, but from the twenty-foot storm surge2 that overwhelmed the low-lying city. […] More than three hundred people died, many of them swept away by the surging waters that 5 submerged much of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. [...] It was clear that this storm was the beginning of the end of Miami as a booming twenty-firstcentury city. [...] Because of the higher water, the storm surge pushed deeper into the region than anyone had imagined it could, flowing up drainage canals and flooding homes and malls several miles from the coast. Miami International Airport was shut down for ten days. Salt water 10 shorted out underground electrical wiring, leaving parts of the county dark for weeks. Municipal drinking-water wells were contaminated with salt water. In soggy3 neighborhoods, mosquitoes carrying Zika and dengue4 fever viruses hatched5. [...] The beaches were mostly gone too. Tourists disappeared. Only the wealthiest could afford to insure their homes. Mortgages6 were nearly impossible 15 to get, mostly because banks didn’t believe the homes would be there in thirty years. Still, the waters kept rising, nearly a foot each decade. Each big storm devoured more of the coastline, pushing the water deeper and deeper into the city. The skyscrapers that had gone up during the boom years were gradually abandoned and used as staging grounds for drug runners and exotic-animal traffickers. Crocodiles nested in the ruins of the Frost 20 Museum of Science. Still, the waters kept rising. That is, of course, merely one possible vision of the future. Rising and falling seas represent one of the ancient rhythms of the Earth, the background track that has played during the entire four-billion-year life of the planet. What’s different today is that humans are interfering with this natural rhythm by heating up the planet and 25 melting the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. […] We have become a geological force on the planet, with the power to reshape the boundaries of the world in ways we didn’t intend and don’t entirely understand. As our world floods, it is likely to cause immense suffering and devastation. It is also likely to bring people together and inspire creativity and 30 camaraderie in ways that no one can foresee. Either way, the water is coming. CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What consequences did the hurricane have on Miami?

▲ Several houses destroyed after the terrible hurricane Katrina occurred in New Orleans in 2005.

2 How have things changed today compared with the past?

3 Consider the author’s attitude to the present situation. Is his viewpoint completely negative? Can anything still be done? Quote from the text. DISCUSS 2 Compare Evelyn’s with Goodell’s analysis. How similar/different are they? Has man learnt any lessons from the past?

141

AUTHORS AND WORKS Restoration drama LEARNING DIGITAL W illiam Congreve and The Way of the World PDF

William Congreve (1670–1729)

• The Way of the World: full plot

Profile Congreve befriended some of the greatest artists of the Augustan Age, Swift, Steele and Pope, and became the master Restoration dramatist of the comedy of manners ( p. 130), filled with social jokes, repartee and quick and witty dialogue that the dramatist and audience shared and enjoyed. His plays were staged in the smaller playhouses of the Restoration ( p. 130) and reflected the shallow world of fashion, courtship and seduction, of the upper-class life of his time; the society he depicts is artificial, empty, and full of affectations, which he satirises. His comedies show the free sexual life led by most courtiers, and the battle of the sexes they were actively engaged in; the plays are both incredibly funny and a satire of the superficial life of the upper classes. Although The Way of the World is considered today as the best example of the Restoration comedy, it was rather unsuccessful on the stage, as the tastes of the audience had already changed by the end of the Restoration period. Congreve gave up writing plays and became a respectable man of letters, honoured by the nobility and so acclaimed that Voltaire visited him to try and learn the secret of his art.

The Way of the World (1700) Conflict rises from the adventures of Mirabell, a reformed libertine, and Millamant, an heiress. She embodies the features of the upper-class lady of her time, economically independent, sophisticated and self-confident. They finally agree to marry on the basis of mutual respect and independence after their clever stratagems have helped them to eliminate all the obstacles preventing their union.

THE PLOT Mirabell is deeply in love with Millamant, but her aunt, Lady Wishfort, despises him because he once pretended to love her; she controls Millamant’s considerable inheritance, and won’t allow the couple to marry. Mirabell makes up an elaborate plan to try to obtain Lady Wishfort’s consent while Mr Fainall tries to blackmail Lady Wishfort in order to obtain her money and Mirabell’s inheritance. Mirabell‘s plan fails but Millamant manages to reveal Mr Fainall’s falsity and in exchange for the help that she has been given, Lady Wishfort gives her consent to Mirabell and Millamant’s marriage.

Characters According to a popular dramatic device of the period, the characters’ surnames are descriptive of their roles and personalities: Millamant’s name is of Italian origin (mille amanti) and it reveals that she has had thousands of suitors. Also the name of her lover is of Italian origin, Mirabell (di bell’aspetto). His name emphasises his good looks and charm. Lady Wishfort’s name means ‘wish for it (love)‘ while Fainall means ‘he who feigns all‘.

• Millamant and Mirabell Millamant represents the belle, the beautiful feminine woman; she is the antithesis of adulteresses and Lady Wishfort, who has no sense of self-respect. Mirabell is a former libertine who has genuinely fallen in love with Millamant. He is elegant, witty and clever, and the antithesis of the graceless ruffians who are only interested in plotting and intrigues. They are similar in many aspects; they are unconventional, say what they think and enjoy their independence, which they are willing to give up 142

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1670 Congreve was born in Yorkshire but was educated in Ireland as his father served there.

1686 He entered Trinity College, Dublin.

1691 He started to study law at the Middle Temple in London, but abandoned his legal studies to take up the career of dramatist and poet. 1693

WORKS

The Old Bachelor

1694

1693–1700 KEY FACT He wrote all his five plays, with roles for the famous actresses of his time.

The Double Dealer

1695

Love for Love

1714 He received a political appointment and was sent to Jamaica; he wrote poetry and translated the works of Homer, Juvenal, Ovid and Horace.

1729 He died leaving most of his fortune to the Duchess of Marlborough, probably his lover, and his closest friend in his final years.

1700

The Way of the World p. 142

only because they are sincerely in love. Although they speak the witty language typical of the comedy of manners, they sound psychologically truthful and realistic in the middle of all their plotting.

Themes • Marriage and adultery

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to the correct definition (a–d). 1

the belle

repartee

the battle of the sexes

libertine

• Jealousy and deceit

a a conversation with quick witty exchanges b the most beautiful woman in a group or at an event c a rich or important man who has affairs with many women d the fight between men and women to gain control in relationships

MIND MAP

Marriage and adultery are the main themes in The Way of the World: many of the marriages in the play which were arranged before the events depicted, like Mrs Fainall’s marriage to Fainall, are only meant to ensure money and reputation. This reflects the reality of the time, where marriages were usually arranged by families, and the main purpose was to grant the individuals property, inheritance, wealth, or sometimes a title to be bought from impoverished nobility. The only exception to this lies in the love of Millamant and Mirabell, who choose each other. Their love is sincere but the world they live in only cares about money, and they are no exception to the rule. Neither will the other marry unless they manage to obtain the large inheritance Millamant is entitled to; they are no romantic lovers throwing everything away for passion, but experienced adults who care for feelings that they have discovered to be true and strong. Another aspect that Congreve underlines in their relationship is their sincerity and promise of fidelity in marriage; they can see all the falsity of men and women in their game of love, or rather the battle of the sexes, exactly because they played the same roles for such a long time before falling in love and choosing each other. Jealousy, deceit, and intrigue all act as drivers of conflict; the play is actually a competition between Mirabell and Fainall to deceive the other by means of opposing schemes to gain control of Lady Wishfort and thus of the fortune she controls.

Language In the play there is a lot of gossiping, overhearing and plotting in secret, as well as the satire of the falsity and superficiality of the time. Language is a major advantage to the successful presentation of situations and themes; the dialogues are witty and quick, mostly ironic, and reveal Congreve’s mastery of language. Brilliant word plays, striking antitheses, and similes and metaphors are often used; Millamant and Mirabell are the wittiest and most brilliant in their repartees, and Congreve manages to individualise each while making them sound like two perfect representatives of the mannerisms of the age.

William Congreve Millamant and Mirabell’s love story

comedy of manners

battle of the sexes

1 Answer the questions. 1 Who were Congreve’s friends?

marriage – adultery upper classes’ sexual life

CHECK OUT

The Way of the World

appearance – reality

2 What kind of plays did he write? 3 Who are the protagonists of The Way of the World? 4 What themes are present in the play?

Ideas for your map: MARRIAGE/LOVE

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143

AUTHORS AND WORKS Restoration drama LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T19 Provisos 25 The Way of the World

Millamant and Mirabell begin to speak about their ideas of love, and set up provisos (clauses) for accepting their future conditions of husband and wife in a humorous, witty exchange: their dialogue shows the reality of their feelings but also the superficial manners of the upper classes of late 17th-century English society.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

give up • rudely • accommodating • female • early • conditions • in public • masks • Sunday Millamant claims that once married she cannot be expected to (1)

her habits, like waking

up late and daydreaming. Mirabell replies that he will wake up as (2) Millamant agrees to this and sets more (3) kiss (4)

, won’t act (5)

the first (6)

as he wants.

: she won’t be called by pet names, they won’t towards one another, and won’t go to the park on

of their marriage to not go ever again. Mirabell accepts her conditions and

adds his own: she must not have close (7)

friends who would try to ruin their marriage,

she must not dislike her own face as long as he likes it, she must not wear (8)

in general,

or corsets while pregnant, and must only have simple English food at her tea-table. If she agrees, he will be an (9)

husband.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Identify all the social activities that men and women of the upper classes do. Are they important or frivolous?

Millamant Ah, don’t be impertinent. – My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? Ay-h, adieu – my morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, all ye douceurs, ye sommeils du matin1, adieu? – I can’t do’t, ’tis more than impossible. Positively, Mirabell, I’ll lie 5 abed in a morning2 as long as I please. Mirabell Then I’ll get up in a morning as early as I please. Millamant Ah! Idle creature, get up when you will. – And d’ye hear, I won’t be called names after I’m married; positively I won’t be called names. Mirabell Names? Millamant Aye, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, and the rest of that 10 nauseous cant3 in which men and their wives are so fulsomely familiar – I shall never bear that. – Good Mirabell, don’t let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis; nor go to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in a new chariot to provoke eyes and whispers, and then never to be seen together again, as if we were proud of one another the first week and ashamed of one another for ever 15 after. Let us never visit together nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange4 and well bred. Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while, and as well bred as if we were not married at all. Mirabell Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto your demands are pretty 20 reasonable. 5 Millamant Trifles , – as liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces6 on your part. 1 ye douceurs... matin: voi, dolcezze, voi, languori del mattino

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2 in a morning: al mattino 3 cant: gergo trito e banale; tiritera 4 strange: distaccati, indifferenti, riservati

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

5 Trifles: inezie 6 wry faces: smorfie di disappunto

William Congreve 2 What liberties does Millamant desire to keep even after becoming a wife? 3 What is the most important condition that she sets for her future husband?

4 What does MIrabell think of women’s fashion?

7 wits: begli spiriti 8 dwindle into a wife: ridurmi (rimpicciolirmi) in una moglie 9 Your bill... advanced: Tu pretendi un po’ troppo 10 I covenant... general: stabilisco che tu frequenti tutti allo stesso modo 11 to screen... countenance: nascondere le sue beghe amorose con la tua benedizione 12 tempt... secrecy: tentare di sottoporti alla prova di un reciproco segreto 13 decoy-duck... mask: nessun amico compiacente che ti persuada con lusinghe ad andare a una commedia portando la maschera nella speranza di attirare dei vagheggini 14 the frolic... had: a burla che mi facesti

To wear what I please, and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits7 that I don’t like, because they are your acquaintance; or to be intimate with fools because they may be your relations. 25 Come to dinner when I please, dine in my dressing-room when I’m out of humour, without giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my teatable, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into 30 a wife8. MIRABELL Your bill of fare is something advanced9 in this latter account. Well, have I liberty to offer conditions – that when you are dwindled into a wife, I may not be beyond measure enlarged into a husband? 35 Millamant You have free leave. Propose your utmost; speak and spare not. 10 Mirabell I thank you. Imprimis then, I covenant that your acquaintance be general , that you admit no sworn confidante or intimate of your own sex, no she-friend to screen her affairs under your countenance11 and tempt you to make trial of a mutual secrecy12. No decoy-duck to wheedle you a fop-scrambling to the play in a mask13 then bring you home in a pretended fright, when you think you shall be found out – and rail at 40 me for missing the play and disappointing the frolic which you had14, to pick me up and prove my constancy. Millamant Detestable imprimis! I go to the play in a mask! Mirabell Item15, I article16, that you continue to like your own face as long as I shall; and while it passes current with me17, that you endeavour not to new-coin it. To which end, together 45 with all vizards for the day18, I prohibit all masks for the night, made of oiled-skins and I know not what – hog’s bones, hare’s gall, pig-water, and the marrow of a roasted cat19. In short, I forbid all commerce20 with the gentlewoman in Whatd’yecall-it Court. Item, I shut my doors against all bawds with baskets21, and pennyworths of muslin, china, fans, 50 atlases22, etc. – Item, when you shall be breeding23 – Millamant Ah! name it not. Mirabell Which may be presumed, with a blessing on our endeavours – Millamant Odious endeavours! Mirabell I denounce against all strait lacing24, squeezing for a shape, till you mould my boy’s head like a sugar-loaf, and instead of a man-child, make me the father to a crooked 55 15 Item: vocabolo per introdurre ogni voce di una lista 16 I article: io fisso, stipulo 17 while... me: finché gode i miei favori 18 vizards for the day: maschere per il giorno 19 hog’s bones... cat: ossa di porco, fiele di lepre, urina di maiale, e il midollo di un gatto arrostito 20 commerce: relazione 21 bawds with baskets: mezzane con cesti (di cose in vendita) 22 pennyworths... atlases: mussola, porcellane, ventagli, atlanti, (tutti) di nessun valore 23 breeding: incinta 24 I denounce... lacing: Mi oppongo ai corsetti troppo stretti

▲ Theatre representation of The Way of the World

145

AUTHORS AND WORKS Restoration drama

billet25. Lastly, to the dominion of the tea-table I submit, – but with proviso, that you exceed not in your province; but restrain yourself to native and simple teatable drinks, as tea, chocolate, and coffee, as likewise to genuine and authorized tea-table talk-such as mending of fashions, spoiling reputations, railing at absent friends26, and so forth – but that on no account you encroach upon27 the men’s prerogative and presume to drink 60 healths or toast fellows28, for prevention of which I banish all foreign forces29, all auxiliaries to the tea-table, as orange-brandy, all aniseed, cinnamon, citron, and Barbadoes waters, together with ratafia30 and the most noble spirit of clary31, – but for cowslip-wine, poppy water, and all dormitives32, those I allow. These provisos admitted, in other things I may 65 prove a tractable and complying husband. 25 crooked billet: pezzo di legno (da ardere) deforme 26 railing... friends: sparlare di amici assenti 27 encroach upon: usurpare

28 drink... fellows: brindare a qualunque uomo 29 foreign forces: sostanze estranee 30 orange-brandy... ratafia: liquori speziati

31 clary: bevanda alcolica ricavata dal miele e da un’erba aromatica (sclarea), con pepe e zenzero 32 but for... dormitives: eccetto estratto di primule, tisana di papavero, e tutti i sonniferi

ANALYSE 4 What is the purpose of Mirabell’s conditions, on his part?

3 Answer the questions. 1 Does Millamant care about being married as a show in front of other people? 2 What is Millamant concerned about? 3 What traditional role is she refusing for herself in her future condition as a wife?

INTERPRET 4 Both lovers value independence and sincerity more than anything, and accept each other as equal. How modern is their attitude in your view? PDF

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#BookTok

Discover top trending book recommendations

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2014) by Jenny Han Born to American-Korean parents, Jenny Han is an American author of YA fiction. She was inspired to write her first romance novel based on the love letters she used to write as a teen to the boys she had a crush on. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was followed by two sequels published in 2015 and 2017 and a film adaptation that came out in 2018.

DISCUSS

Lost – and found – in the mail 16-year-old Lara Jean has never confessed her feelings to the five crushes she had. Instead she wrote each of them a letter about her feelings and kept them safely in a box under her bed, until one day the letters are mailed to the boys and she ends up having to deal with them face to face.

“

fter the first few pages into this novel, I wasn‘t sure A I was going to finish it. I found the protagonist a bit childish – I was annoyed by her calling her mother and father Mommy and Daddy – and everything sounded a bit too perfect to be believable. But I‘m glad I didn’t give up reading: it was not only a ‘love story’ as it also focused on the relationship between sisters and their family.

“

ove is scary: it changes; it can go away. That‘s the part of the risk. I don‘t want to be L scared anymore.

1 Watch the video, listen to Amanda’s review of the book and answer the questions. 1 Is it easy for you to talk about how you feel to the people you love? 2 Is writing still a good way for a person to express their feelings? 3 How would you feel if someone wrote you a love letter? 146

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the novel and the links with Congreve’s The Way of the World.

THE ARTS

Marriage, the affair of a lifetime Artists, as well as writers, have presented marriage as one of the worst human conditions when imposed by force and based on reasons of social improvement, success and wealth, but also as one of the happiest when it is the free choice of individuals who love each other.

The Marriage Settlement (1743) by William Hogarth THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. The Marriage Settlement 1 What is the gentleman at the centre of Hogarth’s painting going to do? 2 How interested are the future bride and bridegroom? 3 How does Hogarth’s painting satirise arranged marriages? Consider the 1886 Common Law definition of marriage, as ‘the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others’. 4 What impression does the painting make on you? The Three Candles ▲ The Marriage Settlement

is the first of six paintings satirising arranged marriages. The two fathers sitting at the desk are negotiating the marriage: one is extremely wealthy, and the other is an aristocrat (proudly showing his family tree) but heavily in debt. The soon-to-be-married couple sit on the left, while the lawyer to the left of the bride-to-be smiles at her with interest.

▶ Marc Chagall was one of the

best-known representatives of the Russian Avant-garde. The young bride represents Chagall’s own wife, while the candles are a religious element from the author’s Jewish background.

The Three Candles (1938–40) by Marc Chagall

5 What is the young couple doing? 6 What are they focusing on as they float? 7 Does the lovers’ embrace look forced or voluntary, sad or joyful? 8 What impression do the bursting colours and childlike innocence of the couple make on you? Debate 2 Debate the statement in groups.

Marriage is a formal

rite with no significance.

Group A believe that all forms of formalised unions are detrimental to a couple’s relationship. Group B believe that they add value and strength to the relationship.

Common Law is law developed by judges and courts establishing precedents through decisions.

Ideas for your map: MARRIAGE/LOVE

p. 167

147

AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel LEARNING DIGITAL

Aphra Behn (1640 –1689)

A phra Behn and Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave PDF

• Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: full plot • Slave trade through the centuries

Profile Aphra Behn was not only one of the first women writers in English literature, but also one of the first writers to raise their voice against slavery in her most famous novel Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave. In her fiction, Behn prefigured Romantic ‘romances’ and exoticism (in which women writers excelled), since her short narratives mixed history, politics, romance, pseudo-autobiography, sentiments, abstractions and unrealistic details.

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (1688)

MIND MAP

Aphra Behn

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave first antislavery novel tragic hero

The protagonist of her novel, Oroonoko is a royal prince from Cormantine (now Ghana), but the old king wants the young woman Oroonoko is in love with, Imoinda, for himself. First Imoinda and then Oroonoko become slaves; his rejection of slavery determines their tragic end because Oroonoko persuades the other slaves to rebel and escape. When the armed colonists go after the slaves, his followers abandon him as they fear for their lives, preferring slavery to death. They are recaptured and Oroonoko is beaten almost to death. He marries Imoinda but he can’t accept that they are slaves. He kills her while she is expecting their baby. Oroonoko is the archetypal Shakespearean tragic hero. His virtues and beauty cause admiration even when he is a slave but he is tormented by loss, revenge, and a great courage that causes his tragic end.

T20 We are men, not brutes and not slaves 26 Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Oroonoko, here introduced with his slave name, Caesar, learns that Imoinda is pregnant and decides to rebel against the slave owners by escaping. He tries to persuade the other slaves to join him.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

cruel • rebel • defeating • slavery • acclaim • beasts Oroonoko/Caesar talks to the other slaves in grand terms and shows them the nature of (1) of the (3)

, how it makes them less than men and similar to (2)

. He reminds them

tortures that the slave owners inflict on them, and of the fact that they have not

won the right to enslave the blacks by (4) fellow companions to (5)

them in honourable battle. He finally incites his

, and they all (6)

him as a great leader.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: FREEDOM

p. 167

LIFE 1640 She probably spent her childhood in Suriname (at the time an English colony, later Dutch Guiana).

1658 She married a merchant in London.

1666 She worked for King James II as a spy in Antwerp.

2 Answer the questions. 1 How long will they be slaves?

2 Does slavery change men for the better or for the worse?

3 Who are the members of the ‘degenerate’ race? 4 What kind of questions are these? 5 Are the slaves convinced by Caesar/Oroonoko’s speech?

1688 KEY FACT She published her most famous novel, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave.

1688

1670

WORKS

UNDERSTAND

1670 She wrote her first play, The Forc’d Marriage; other 14 followed. Her plays were staged frequently and attended by Charles II.

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave p. 148

The Forc’d Marriage

Caesar, having singled out these men from the women and children, made an harangue to ’em, of the miseries and ignominies of slavery; counting up all their toils and sufferings, under such loads, burdens, and drudgeries1 as were fitter for beasts than men; senseless brutes, than human souls. He told ’em, it was not for days, months, or years, but for eternity; there was no end to be of their misfortunes: they suffered not like men who 5 might find a glory and fortitude in oppression; but like dogs, that loved the whip and bell, and fawned2 the more they were beaten: that they had lost the divine quality of men, and were become insensible asses, fit only to bear: nay, worse; an ass, or dog, or horse, having done his duty could lie down in retreat, and rise to work again, and while he did his duty, endured no stripes; but men, villainous, senseless men, such as they, toiled on all 10 the tedious week till Black Friday: and then, whether they worked or not, whether they were faulty or meriting, they, promiscuously, the innocent with the guilty, suffered the infamous whip, the sordid stripes, from their fellow-slaves, till their blood trickled from all parts of their body; blood, whose every drop ought to be revenged with a life of some of those tyrants that impose it. “And why,” said he, “my dear friends and fellow-sufferers, 15 should we be slaves to an unknown people? Have they vanquished3 us nobly in fight? Have they won us in honorable battle? And are we by the chance of war become their slaves? This would not anger a noble heart; this would not animate a soldier’s soul: no, but we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards; and the support of rogues and runagates, that have abandoned their own countries for 20 rapine, murders, theft, and villainies. Do you not hear every day how they upbraid4 each other with infamy of life, below the wildest savages? And shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have no one human virtue left, to distinguish them from the vilest creatures? Will you, I say, suffer the lash from such hands?” They all replied with one 25 accord, “No, no, no; Caesar has spoke5 like a great captain, like a great king.” 1 drudgeries: le dure fatiche 2 fawned: facevano i ruffiani

ANALYSE

3 vanquished: sconfitti 4 upbraid: rimproverano

5 spoke: spoken

DEBATE

3 Answer the questions.

5 Debate the statement in groups.

1 What is slavery like? Find evidence in the extract.

Life in slavery is better than no life at all.

2 Would you qualify Oroonoko’s/Caesar’s speech as epic? Why?

Group A backs Oroonoko’s ideals (you should be ready to die for your freedom).

INTERPRET 4 How strong is Aphra Behn’s denunciation of slavery through Oroonoko’s/Caesar’s words?

Group B supports the position of the slaves who abandon him (life is more important than any values).

PDF

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149

AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)

LEARNING DIGITAL D aniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe PPT

Daniel Defoe

PDF

A Journal of the Plague Year DT16 Shutting people in their homes

IN ACTION

Profile

English in action

Defoe wrote over five hundred journals, pamphlets, and books whose subjects varied from marriage to politics, to the supernatural. As a journalist Defoe was a pioneer of economic journalism, as he dedicated himself to the analysis of the economic state of his time. This activity is reflected in his novels in his realistic and factual style and his concern with money and wealth. He was also a prolific political pamphleteer; he was a spy for both the Whigs and the Tories and wrote pamphlets in their defence. He became a novelist because he saw writing as a good source of income. The education Defoe received at the Dissenting Academy was practical, and this was the first step in forming his down-to-earth mentality. He wrote for the growing middle-class public; as a journalist and a businessman himself, he knew their interests, customs and values perfectly and offered an accurate description of the qualities and defects of the middle-class man: hard work and faith among the qualities, and rebelliousness and the desire for adventure among the defects. He is considered one of the fathers of the English novel; his style derived from his practice as a journalist and gave readers the illusion of authenticity as he used the form of the diary or a first-person narration, most often in the form of an autobiography. The hero or the heroine fights against many misfortunes, but their fights are not in the name of great ideals, but rather for their ‘daily bread’. They are determined and strong, they fight against all odds and eventually choose a virtuous life. Prosperity and success combined with rectitude and morality are the values that Defoe’s heroes and heroines identify with, usually after a period of rebellion. Puritan faith in God’s providence is a key theme of his works, whose protagonists pray to God and then work hard to merit God’s mercy on them.

1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 down-to-earth = realistic / unrealistic 2 customs = ways of speaking / behaving that identify a people 3 against all odds = with high / hardly any hope of success 4 eponymous = the name of a person / work that comes from the name of another person 5 to be stranded = to be unable to leave a person / place

Genre Defoe’s novels are modelled on the spiritual autobiography, a type of non-fiction prose that dominated Protestant writing during the seventeenth century. This form greatly contributed to both the popularity of his works and to their illusion of authenticity with his reading public, who would have rejected a work of pure illusion as false and therefore ‘immoral’. Spiritual autobiographies trace a character’s moral life, with the cycle fall-into-sin/shallow repentance/fall-into-sin, until the final conversion. Both Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are presented as the true account of the lives of their eponymous protagonists; the novels detail their lives from their births to Robinson’s return to England after his many years on a desert island and to Moll’s old age. Robinson is repeatedly tempted by his desire for adventure until he is stranded on a desert island and, while suffering the hard life that is necessary for his survival, he prays to God and accepts the values of his middle-class family. Moll Flanders falls into sin because her vanity leads her to lose her virtue; she repeatedly falls into temptation, with a long list of husbands, lovers and children, and she redeems herself after a final long confession of her sins.

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1660 Daniel Defoe was born in London in a family of Presbyterian dissenters, a Protestant sect which rejected the authority of the Church of England.

WORKS

1674 He went to Charles Morton’s Dissenting Academy to become a clergyman according to his father’s wishes.

1678 KEY FACT He left school and decided to enter the business world. He became a merchant and participated in several businesses, often facing bankruptcy.

1692 He was arrested for debts; after release he travelled widely on the Continent.

1702 He was charged with sedition and libel for the publication of The Shortest Way With Dissenters and sent to Newgate prison the following year.

1704–13 He published The Review, a periodical.

1719 KEY FACT He wrote his first novel, Robinson Crusoe. This gave him some prosperity. Other novels and pamphlets followed.

1719

Robinson Crusoe p. 152

1722

1731 He died in poverty and tormented by his old creditors.

1724

• A Journal of the Plague Year • Moll Flanders • Captain Singleton

The Fortunate Mistress (Roxana)

Style Defoe used clear and explicit language, similar to that of many popular newspapers that had great success at that time, and also of the diarists. His factual style is most visible in A Journal of the Plague Year about the Great Plague of London in 1665. The work chronicles the chaos of daily life during the plague in a mixture of accurate facts and fiction, and it is rich in detail, naming exact places and giving mortality data. Defoe captured the pragmatic fatalism of Londoners in these dreadful circumstances.

MIND MAP

economic journalism

Daniel Defoe

political pamphleteer

novelist

realistic factual style middle-class public first-person narrator autobiography Puritan ideals

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How important were Defoe’s education and his activity as a journalist for his works? 2 What kind of readers did Defoe write for? 3 What kind of language did he use? ▲ John Charles Dollman, Robinson Crusoe and His Man Friday

4 Why are his novels examples of spiritual autobiography?

Ideas for your map: THE ECONOMIC MAN

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151

AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full plot • Robinson Crusoe, the economic man

Robinson Crusoe (1719) The novel is loosely based on the life and story of Scotsman Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who spent four years on a desert island. The novelty of Defoe‘s work consisted in his accurate realism, characterised by precise chronology and detailed descriptions. To increase verisimilitude he used a first-person narrator who writes a diary, with the events told in chronological order. The protagonist is resolute in spirit, forced to struggle against many misfortunes and count on selfreliance for survival. He is a flat character, he does not develop psychologically in the novel.

THE PLOT Nineteen-year-old Robinson Crusoe leaves his family in search of adventure at sea. First he lands in Brazil and becomes a wealthy plantation owner. Then, during an expedition he is cast away on a remote island in the Atlantic (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30, 1659. His companions die; he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it sinks and builds a fenced-in habitation near a cave, which he calls his ‘castle’. He hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes, learns to make bread and pottery and raises goats, all using tools salvaged from his ship, as well as created from stone and also wood. He also adopts a small parrot. He regularly reads the Bible, keeps a calendar and writes a journal. After 25 years he rescues a savage from the cannibals; he becomes his servant Friday. Finally Robinson is rescued by an English ship and returns to Britain with Friday, his servant, to discover that he has become a rich man thanks to his plantation in Brazil.

Themes • The economic man’s needs and attitude

IN ACTION Web quest

Races do not exist What Franz Boas (1858– 1942), the founder of the relativistic, culturecentred school of American anthropology, discovered was that there were more differences between those within a so-called race and, furthermore, more similarities between those individuals of supposedly different, so-called racial categories. This brought about the rejection of the very concept of race as scientifically true. It was an arbitrary, human-made creation, a social construct. 1 Search the web to discover how archaeological and genetic evidence has confirmed Boas’ point.

152

Every day Robinson struggles, not for ideals or passion, but for ‘his daily bread’: common sense usually prevails over feelings, together with the practical pursuit of money in Brazil and comfort and prosperity on the island. Robinson is the example of the economic man, who looks for wealth and profit; he is also the expression of the Puritan attitude, which sees wealth and prosperity as evidence of God’s blessing. The account of a shipwrecked sailor who runs his ‘business’ on the island with incredible energy and determination offers a dream of building a private kingdom and of being completely self-sufficient. Robinson is devout in his reading of the Bible, but his attitude as a self-made man makes him a forerunner of modern individualism. Like other characters in Defoe’s novels, Robinson is solitary; he needs no one but himself and survives 25 years on the island in perfect solitude, without falling victim to despair. Even after he rescues Friday, a cannibal, there is no emotional or psychological need which Friday can satisfy. The ‘savage’ is a useful tool in his master’s hands, and Robinson depends on no one but himself.

• Robinson-Friday relationship Western explorers and traders assumed that a culture was civilised only if it had a written language, or had the means to manufacture ships or powerful weapons, and classified people as belonging or not belonging to ‘the white race’. They believed in the superiority of Western culture over the peoples they encountered. It was common for them to describe native peoples as ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’, as Robinson does with Friday. Cannibalism was seen as the evidence of primitivism in the natives, who were deprived of the light of reason. As a ‘savage’ and cannibal, Friday can be the perfect slave of a benevolent master, but Robinson does not see him as a human being.

Language and style The use of a first-person narrator and apparently genuine journal entries creates a realistic frame for the novel. Robinson’s prose is simple and accurate, especially as he focuses on his needs for food, shelter and clothing on the island; he also writes frequent comments in his diary about his fortune or misfortune. The focalisation is entirely through his eyes, which makes it possible to present the natives entirely from Robinson’s perspective.

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

Daniel Defoe MIND MAP

self-made man

Robinson Crusoe

individualism

Robinson-Friday

diary style

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why is Robinson Crusoe the perfect economic man? 2 How does Robinson see Friday? 3 How does Defoe make the novel realistic?

T21 Are cannibals like us? 27 Robinson Crusoe

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

After 18 years of total isolation on the island, Robinson is scared when he sees a footprint on the sand, and hides for three days in his ‘castle’, the fortified cave he has built. After this, he starts patrolling the island to see if the ‘savages’ have landed, and wonders what he should do with the cannibals. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

legitimate • feelings • let live • debates Robinson considers his own (1)

about cannibalism, and (2)

whether

cannibals are real sinners or not. He wants to establish if his attack on them would be (3)

. He comes to a conclusion concerning cannibals: live and (4)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 How does Robinson feel about cannibalism?

2 Why can’t the cannibals be accused of committing a crime?

My passions were at first fired1 by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom2 of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence3, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and 5 actuated4 by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into5. […] I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what I was going to engage in6 […]. I debated this very often with myself thus: “How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving7, or their light8 reproaching them; they do not know it to be an 10 offence, and then commit it in defiance of9 divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive10 taken in war than we do to kill an ox11; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton12.” When I considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the wrong; that these people were not murderers, in the sense that I had before condemned them in 15

1 fired: accese 2 Il ”costume innaturale“ di cui Robinson parla è il cannibalismo. 3 suffered by Providence: tollerati dalla Provvidenza 4 actuated: resi concreti

5 run them into: a cui potrebbe averli portati 6 engage in: impegnarmi (Robinson si chiede se dovrebbe attaccare i cannibali che occasionalmente approdano sulla sua isola.) 7 it is... reproving: le loro coscienze non glielo rimproverano come un crimine

8 light: la luce della ragione, che i ‘selvaggi’ secondo Robinson non hanno; non sono umani 9 in defiance of: sfidando 10 captive: prigioniero 11 ox: bue 12 mutton: montone

153

AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel 13 put… sword: passati alla spada (uccisi) 14 giving quarter: dando tregua 15 fall upon: attaccarli

my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword13, without giving quarter14, though they threw down their arms and submitted. In the next place, it occurred to me that although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury 20 […]; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them15. (Abridged from Chapter 11)

ANALYSE 3 Robinson talks about the cannibals as ‘them’ and contrasts them with ‘us’. Whom does he mean by ‘us’? 4 What does Robinson’s reasoning show? Choose all the correct statements. a

his inability to control his instinctive repulsion of cannibalism

his attempt to consider different viewpoints on an issue

his constant concern for clarity

his hesitation and uncertainty

rstly they are not aware of their actions, and secondly they are not fi dangerous to him.

they cannot be held to be morally responsible for their actions.

6 Answer the questions. 1 What narrator is present in the text, and what focalisation does he/she choose? 2 Which narrative technique(s) does the narrator use from among the following? To what effect? comment description direct speech direct thought report

5 Robinson’s debate brings him to the conclusion that he should not attack the cannibals because a

they can do him no harm.

INTERPRET 7 For Robinson ‘savages’ are not equal to him. Is this fair in your opinion? PDF

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T22 Friday, the ideal ‘savage’ 28 Robinson Crusoe

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Robinson helps the savage to kill the men who are running after him, and the savage humbly submits himself to Robinson’s authority. Robinson takes him to his cave, feeds him, gives him some water, and prepares him a bed. The savage falls asleep, and Robinson observes him.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

appearance • English • Master • loyal • submission • prepares Robinson describes and comments on Friday’s physical (1)

. When he wakes up, he

and Robinson speaks to him in (3)

gives Robinson clear signs of (2)

He teaches his new servant both his new name, Friday, and the name Robinson wants to be called, (4)

. For his own safety Robinson (5)

cave, and finally refers that Friday will prove to be (6)

Friday a little hut outside his own at all times.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Friday look like? Give evidence.

He was a comely1, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight, strong limbs2, not too large; tall, and well-shaped; and, as I reckon3, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly4 aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance, too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead5 very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness6 in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny7; and yet not an ugly, yellow, 1 comely: gradevole 2 limbs: membra 3 reckon: credo

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4 surly: burbero 5 forehead: fronte

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

6 sparkling sharpness: vivace intelligenza 7 tawny: marrone (come abbronzato)

Daniel Defoe

2 What does Friday do after waking up? Why?

3 Where does Friday sleep? Why there?

4 What kind of servant will Friday prove to be?

nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun8 olive-colour, that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump9; his nose small, not flat, like the negroes; a 10 very good mouth, thin lips, and his fine teeth well set, and as white as ivory. […] After he had slumbered10, rather than slept, about half-an-hour, he awoke again, and came out of the cave to me: for I had been milking my goats11 which I had in the enclosure just by12: when he espied13 me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic14 gestures to show 15 it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. I understood him in many things, and let him know I was very well pleased with him. In a little time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me: and first, I let him know his name should be Friday, 20 which was the day I saved his life: I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise15 taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name. […] The next day, after I came home to my hutch16 with him, I began to consider where I should lodge17 him: and that I might do well for him and yet be perfectly easy myself, I made a little tent for him in the vacant18 place between my two fortifications, in the inside of the 25 last, and in the outside of the first. As there was a door or entrance there into my cave, I made a formal framed door-case19, and a door to it, of boards, and set it up in the passage, a little within the entrance; and, causing the door to open in the inside, I barred20 it up in the night, taking in my ladders, too; so that Friday could no way come at me in the inside of my innermost21 wall, without making so much noise in getting over that it must needs awaken 30 me. […] But I needed none of all this precaution; for never man had a more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Friday was to me: without passions, sullenness22, or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged23; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to a father. 8 dun: sul grigio 9 plump: paffuta 10 slumbered: sonnecchiato 11 Mungere le capre fa parte della routine giornaliera di Robinson sull’isola da lui ‘colonizzata’. 12 enclosure just by: recinto lì vicino

13 espied: scorse 14 antic: grotteschi 15 I likewise: io allo stesso modo 16 hutch: capanna (‘casa’ per Robinson) 17 lodge: sistemare 18 vacant: vuoto

19 door-case: intelaiatura della porta 20 barred: sprangavo 21 innermost: più interno 22 sullenness: scontrosità 23 perfectly… engaged: perfettamente convinto del suo dovere (verso Robinson)

ANALYSE 3 Why does Robinson comment on Friday’s physical appearance as he describes the ‘savage’? Choose all the correct options.

erfectly natural and reasonable. As an ‘inferior’, though pleasant p creature, Friday spontaneously accepts Robinson’s superiority.

to share his view of Friday with the reader

t o underline the ‘savage’s difference’; this reveals Robinson’s prejudiced view of the stereotyped ‘black man’

l egitimate at first, but then he realises that Friday has humbled himself as if Robinson himself were a God, and raises the savage from the ground.

to convince the reader that Friday is revolting

4 What stereotype of ‘non-European/black man’ is Robinson trying to make Friday different from? Choose all the correct statements. 1 Robinson calls the savage Friday and himself Master because he

INTERPRET 5 Does Robinson treat Friday fairly in your opinion? Why?/Why not? DEBATE

can’t speak the native’s language, and so he can’t relate to him.

looks down on the native and can only consider him as a servant.

6 Debate the statement in groups.

s ees himself as the viceroy of God on the island, and so he is authorised to rename Friday at his choice.

Are all humans the same?

2 Friday’s perfectly humble disposition to Robinson appears to Robinson as

Group A claim that there are differences in races and cultures among people.

Group B claim that cultural differences exist, but not races.

nreasonable and exaggerated; Friday’s self humiliation is unworthy u of his dignity as a fellow human being.

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FILMS FOR THOUGHT

A man for all worlds Film adaptations of Robinson Crusoe generally focus on Crusoe’s stay on the island; all the protagonists work hard for survival, but two aspects are usually altered. The first is the relationship between Robinson and Friday, which is not always master-servant, coloniser-colonised. They may be friends or enemies, and Friday does not accept all that Robinson teaches him passively. The second is Robinson’s mental state: isolation and the lack of any human contact are often presented as something impossible to bear, in contrast with what the protagonist of Defoe’s novel experiences.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) This American sciencefiction film tells the story of the only survivor of a crash on Mars. Draper, the protagonist, finds some water and edible ‘sausages’ that keep him alive, but he slowly begins to crack from the prolonged isolation.

Robinson Crusoe (1997) The most original aspect of this film is the relationship between Robinson and Friday. Over time, their relationship changes from master-servant to friendship despite their differences in culture and religion. They have arguments, too, and Friday has none of the passivity that Defoe imagined as the only possible characteristic of the ‘good savage’.

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age

Cast Away (2000) Robert Zemeckis’ film explores the hardships of lone survivors through the brilliant invention of Wilson, a volleyball that Chuck Noland, the protagonist, paints with a human face because he desperately needs human company. When he escapes from the island by his own means, he brings Wilson with him, just to lose it in the middle of the ocean.

The Martian (2015) The film is based on the 2011 best-selling novel by Andy Weir; the deserted island is replaced by the arid desert surface of Mars, and Robinson is the astronaut Mark Watney growing potatoes ‘on a planet where nothing grows‘. Watney hardly ever loses his courage and good humour; it probably helps that he has the means to work out how to communicate with NASA to help keep him sane and finally get back to Earth.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Search the web for some clips of the four film adaptations. Here are some suggestions:

2 How truthful in personality and behaviour are these versions of Robinson to the character that Defoe invented?

a Robinson on Mars faces the most terrible problem of all: isolation.

3 Read what Mark Watney says about himself in The Martian:

b Robinson debates with Friday about God and the Bible. c Chuck reassures Wilson (and so himself) that everything is going to be fine. d Watney solves the problem of survival and communication.

‘Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the rover? First guy ever to be there! Climb a hill? First guy to climb that hill.’ ‘They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially ‘colonised’ it. So technically, I colonised Mars.’ How does Watney identify with the explorer and coloniser?

Ideas for your map: THE ECONOMIC MAN

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

LEARNING DIGITAL J onathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels PPT

Jonathan Swift

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Swift, politics and satire

IN ACTION

Profile

English in action

Swift had a complex and enigmatic personality. His strong sense of justice and his intelligence were his greatest gifts, but they came with pride, misanthropy and probable insanity. While living at Moor Park, he started suffering from vertigo. Moreover, his siding with the Whigs first and then the Tories did not help him to have the career he desired; this may have made him resentful and affected his radical views of politics and religion. Swift shared Erasmus’ and Voltaire’s views of man as a rational being but, unlike them, he realised that reason could be weak and misleading, and that people often misuse it, to their own delusion. A total dedication to reason, without the moderation of common sense and humanity, only leads to rationalism, i.e. to excesses in the use of reason.

1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 misanthropy = hate / love for mankind 2 delusion = something that is true / illusory 3 dystopia = a positive / negative imaginary world 4 pedantry = moderate / excessive care for details Look and think

▲ A political satirical sculpture

of former Prime Minister Theresa May, London, 2019

2 Answer the questions. 1 What is written on the sculpture’s nose? 2 What does the man speared by the nose stand for? Focus on his expression, hat and briefcase. 3 Why is former Prime Minister Theresa May represented with a long nose? 4 Is the author of the satirical sculpture in favour or against May and the UK’s decision to leave the EU? Why? 5 The sculpture is a caricature, i.e. a funny representation of a human figure. How similar is it to Swift’s use of distortion and exaggeration? 158

The satirist Swift was a pamphlet-writer and a satirist. Through his Juvenalian savage satire and brilliant use of paradox, he ridiculed the politics, religion and ethics of his time. His gift as a satirical writer lay in creating fantastic situations, lands and characters that have a direct impact on readers because of their combination of accurate realism and sarcastic revelation of the follies of society. His bitter satire about human society inspired many later authors to write dystopian novels ( The Modern Age). • A Tale of a Tub is a satire of religious differences, opposing political positions, pedantry and false scholarship, and the contemporary book trade. Those who fail to support the Anglican Church are enemies of the state, and those who choose all modern novelties and engage in the book trade are not simply supporters of science and commerce but dissenters and Whig-oriented individuals. The work was seen as an attack on religion, and indirectly on Queen Anne as head of the Anglican Church, though Swift’s intention was to support both. • In the accompanying pamphlet The Battle of the Books Swift attacks all those who praise modernity over classical learning; the work is Swift’s contribution to the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (the classics and the new tendencies in literature), which developed in the 17th century first in France and then in England with Sir William Temple and his friends. Swift used his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, too. • A Modest Proposal is written as a letter of advice offering a ‘brilliant’ solution to the problems of extreme poverty and overpopulation in Ireland. It consists in selling all the babies of poor Irish families to rich English families as a delicate food; given the state of exploitation and poverty of Ireland, babies are born not for life and prosperity but only to be ‘eaten’, i.e. devoured by their misery. • Swift’s most complex satire was Gulliver’s Travels; the popularity of the doctor’s adventures as he visits fantastic lands was also due to its matter-of-fact style. Although nowadays Book I and Book II, with the inhabitants of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, are also presented in simplified form as a children’s book, the satire touches upon all fields of society: religion, politics, science, sex, law, marriage, wars and the very idea of rationality that produces such an unfair world.

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1667 Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Protestant English parents.

1686 He graduated from Trinity College in Dublin. 1688 The Glorious Revolution convinced him to leave for England.

1689 KEY FACT He became secretary to Sir William Temple, a diplomat, man of letters and a Whig statesman. He met Esther Johnson, who would become his ‘Stella‘; she was only eight years old at the time, and Swift became her mentor and tutor. They may have secretly married later in their life.

1694 He was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland, the Irish branch of the Anglican Church.

1699 After Temple’s death he returned to Ireland; he was given a stipend at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

1702 Stella moved to Ireland, and then lived in Swift‘s house, though always with female companions.

1710 Swift went over to the Tories in the hope of making a better career; he was recruited to support their cause as editor of ‘The Examiner‘.

1714 Together with Alexander Pope and John Gay he founded the Scriblerus Club. Queen Anne died, Swift’s Tory friends fell into disgrace and his hopes for advancement were frustrated again.

1704

WORKS

1726

Gulliver’s Travels p. 160

• A Tale of a Tub • The Battle of the Books

MIND MAP

misanthropy and insanity vs intelligence

Juvenalian satire

1726 KEY FACT On the occasion of one of his visits to his friends Pope and Gay, he arranged for the publication of Gulliver’s Travels.

1729

1728 Stella died; Swift’s health and memory started to deteriorate until his death.

A Modest Proposal

1766

Journal to Stella (posthumous)

Jonathan Swift

attack on rationalism

accurate realism

satirist

politics – religion – ethics

A Tale of a Tub – The Battle of the Books

A Modest Proposal

Ancients vs Moderns

support of Irish causes

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What was the main purpose of Swift’s satire? 2 What contradicting aspects can be found in Swift’s personality? 3 What topics did he consider in his works? Give some examples. 4 Why did Swift attack the ‘Age of Reason’? ▲ Woodcut from the first edition of The Battle of the Books

▲ Woodcut from A Tale of a Tub illustrating the

‘Three stages of Humanity’, which are the theatre, the gallows, and the pulpit (1705)

Ideas for your map: SATIRE/RELIGION/POLITICS

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From Gulliver‘s Travels DT17 Yahoos and Houyhnhnms

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Gulliver’s Travels is a fierce prose satire of the English manners, institutions and politics, and religious controversies of his time. Swift used Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe ( p. 152) as a model and exploited the popularity of travel books; the novel narrates four imaginary paradoxical journeys by a ship‘s doctor, Lemuel Gulliver, to fantastic remote parts of the world (Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and the land of the Houyhnhnms). At the end of each book, Gulliver returns to England only to leave once again. He remains in his country forever only at the end of Book 4. In order to ridicule English society through what Gulliver sees during his journeys, Swift alters the scale or size of men to make them either ridiculous or hateful, presents impossible inventions to reveal the false pretence of science, and transforms animals, the savant horses, into the symbol of rationalism with no humanity. Gulliver himself is the object of Swift’s satire as a representative of the British man, convinced of the superiority of his culture.

THE PLOT Book 1 Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput; he helps the Lilliputians, the sixinch high inhabitants of the island, in their war against the enemy island of Blefuscu. Book 2 Gulliver leaves for India, but his crew abandon him on Brobdingnag, an unknown land where the inhabitants are giants. First he becomes a pet for children, and then he is sold to the Queen. Gulliver often talks to the King, who inquires into the manners, governments and culture of Europe. Book 3 After an attack by pirates, Gulliver visits the floating island of Laputa and its capital Lagado, where he meets philosophers and scientists who spend their lives in contemplation and absurd research without achieving any practical results. He then visits the island of Glubdubdrib, where he meets great historical figures of the past, and finally the island of Luggnagg, where he meets people deeply unhappy because they are immortal but terribly old. Book 4 After a mutiny on the ship, Gulliver is abandoned in a country inhabited by the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, who are served by a dirty degenerate race of beasts in the shape of men, called Yahoos. Gulliver often talks to his Master horse about his own civilisation and learns about the manners and customs of the noble horses. He tries to become a Houyhnhnm himself, but the horses send him back home because he can’t be like them; he returns to his wife and children, but finds them unbearable, since they look and smell like the Yahoos.

Gulliver, from a British man to a failed Houyhnhnm Unlike Robinson Crusoe ( p. 152), Gulliver is a rounded character. Before his first journey, he is a sensible, well-educated doctor, devotedly looking after his family and certain that English society is the best on Earth. Land after land, Gulliver is increasingly disgusted by the human race and loses his faith in humankind and our ability to build a morally acceptable society. In Book 4, Gulliver’s stay with the horses marks his final transition; he makes himself into a parody of a ‘Houyhnhnm’, but the horses still see him as a Yahoo, a beastly creature incapable of living up to their idea of rationality.

Themes • In Book 1, Lilliputian history parallels European history. The High-Heels and the Low-Heels correspond to the Whigs and Tories of English politics, Lilliput and Blefuscu represent England and France, and the violent conflict between Big-Endians and Little-Endians about the right way to break an egg represents the centuries of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. • Book 2 exploits Gulliver’s change of size from a giant to a dwarf and from being the protector of a whole country to becoming a toy for children in order to satirise Gulliver’s belief about himself as the representative of a superior culture.

▲ Map of Lilliput

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• In Book 3, science and philosophy, the best products of the Age of Enlightenment, are nothing but silly playthings in the distorting lens of Swift’s satire: history cannot teach man anything worthwhile, and the rejection of man’s natural condition thanks to the gift of immortality only changes people into decaying old creatures.

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

Jonathan Swift • Book 4 best reflects Swift’s repudiation of the eighteenth century as the so-called ‘Age of Reason’. The Houyhnhnms, the savant horses, accept death with stoicism and truths as self-evident, they neither lie nor have ‘opinions’, but they are slaves to the dictates of ‘perfect reason’. They do not know reasonableness or common sense; all that is typically human, such as love, friendship, affection, history, literature and creativity, is absent. Their servants, the Yahoos, are the same as human beings in physical appearance, and during his stay, Gulliver realises that the Yahoos and British citizens are both totally beastly in nature. The best results realised by the English world, such as the practice of law, or the choice of Prime Minister, are depicted as corrupt and vicious. Similarly, the Yahoos always fight over the possession of certain shining stones of different colours (precious stones) to which the intelligent horses attach no value.

Interpretations

IN ACTION

Gulliver’s Travels can be read at various levels. It may be seen as: • an account of imaginary adventures in dystopian countries; • a travel book parodying works such as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; • a satirical essay on the political, social and religious conflicts of the time, as well as on the problems caused by scientific and economic progress; • a tale for children; the first two books, in fact, are favourites with children.

Web quest 1 Search the web for these 20th-century authors and their utopian/dystopian novels: • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

Language and style

• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) • Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Choose one and compare the story to Gulliver’s Travels. Do you find any similarities?

One of Swift’s favourite techniques is to mention the unmentionable, even concerning sex and bodily functions; his writing was thus frequently shocking to his contemporary readers. His style is a model of clarity and precision. He has a remarkable command of concrete detail and also displays a series of rhetorical devices such as paradox, hyperbole, distortion, exaggeration, and parody for his satire. As a first-person reliable narrator, Gulliver is able to make all his stories seem vividly real to the reader.

MIND MAP

imaginary journeys

disgust with human race

Gulliver’s Travels

several interpretations

refusal of ‘superior’ culture

adventure book

repudiation of the Age of Reason

travel book

Gulliver: rounded character

first-person reliable narrator

clear and precise style

satirical essay

tale for children

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the notes in the table about Gulliver’s Travels. Date of publication Protagonist and main events Main themes Style Genre 161

AUTHORS AND WORKS The novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

T23 Slaves of perfect reason 29 Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver describes some of the customs and usages of the perfectly rational horses, and shows how inhuman rationalism can be.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

laughs • philosophies • understanding • compares • savant Gulliver explains what reason means to the (1) perfect (2)

of this faculty. He (3)

beings) do and reports the reaction of his Master horse, who (4) that men have many (5)

horses, and what descends from their what they do to what we (human when Gulliver tells him

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What do the horses think of opinions?

2 How do they treat strangers?

3 How important are feelings to them?

4 What is the horses’ main purpose in marriage?

As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is 5 not mingled1, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings2, disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown 10 among the Houyhnhnms. In the like manner, when I used to explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh, “that a creature pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other people’s conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use.” […] Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and 15 these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race; for a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve decency and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no fondness for their colts or foals3, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. And I observed 20 my master to show the same affection to his neighbour’s issue4, that he had for his own. They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue. When the matron5 Houyhnhnms have produced one of each sex, they no longer accompany with their consorts6, except they lose one of their issue by some casualty7, which very seldom 25 happens; but in such a case they meet again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing8, some other couple bestow on him9 one of their own colts, and then go together again until the mother is pregnant. This caution is necessary, to prevent the country 1 mingled: confusa 2 wranglings: discussioni 3 colts or foals: puledri (di varie età)

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4 issue: discendenza 5 matron: matrona 6 accompany… consorts: si accoppiano con il consorte

The Restoration and the Augustan Age – Authors and works

7 casualty: incidente 8 is past bearing: ha superato l’età fertile 9 bestow on him: gli danno

Jonathan Swift 5 Are all horses the same?

10 overburdened with numbers: oppressa da numeri eccessivi 11 chiefly valued: tenuta in alta considerazione 12 comeliness: attrattiva 13 upon the account of: sulla base di 14 jointures: appannaggi vedovili 15 settlements: accordi matrimoniali

from being overburdened with numbers10. But the race of inferior Houyhnhnms, bred up to be servants, is not so strictly limited upon this article: these are allowed to produce three of 30 each sex, to be domestics in the noble families. In their marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued11 in the male, and comeliness12 in the female; not upon the account of13 love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to comeliness. 35 Courtship, love, presents, jointures14, settlements15 have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. But the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of; and the married pair pass their lives 40 with the same friendship and mutual benevolence, that they bear to all others of the same species who come in their way, without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent. (Abridged from Book 4)

ANALYSE 3 Horses and men have totally different ways of life because they have different views of reason. Choose all the correct statements.

2 Differences in opinion, which are the result of debated issues, are much appreciated in both the Houyhnhnms’ country and Gulliver’s land. T F

here is no need to pursue truth and happiness among men, T because both are the result of reason, and need not be chosen.

3 Marriages are arranged by families and friends in both lands.

T F

Each horse occupies the position in society he or she is born for.

4 No passionate feelings exist in the land of the horses, while they are common with human beings.

T F

No advancement in rank is possible in the society of horses.

5 The intelligent horses practise birth control and a rudimentary form of eugenics, while this is unknown with human beings.

T F

ruths are universally recognised because reason guides the horses T to accept them.

6 There are no differences in rank with either the Houyhnhnms or human beings.

T F

The horses are slaves to passion in their personal relationships.

heir society is perfectly regulated, with the best number of T inhabitants, and of the best kind.

No feelings are possible in relationships with men.

DEBATE 5 Debate the statement in two groups.

Reason should rule the world.

4 Now compare the two worlds. Are these statements true (T) or false (F)? Correct the false ones.

Group A wants to prove that the world of the Houyhnhnms is perfect and all their ways the best.

1 Both the horses and men are incapable of doing or thinking of evil.

Group B wants to prove that the world of the noble horses is as imperfect as the world of men.

T F

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▶ Sawrey Gilpin, Gulliver Taking His Final Leave of the Land of Houyhnhnms (1769)

163

ACROSS TIME Satire will never die AND SPACE

The Cockroach (2019) by Ian McEwan

LIFE p. 504 • Ian McEwan (1948) was born in Aldershot, England. He spent his childhood first in Singapore and then North Africa because his father, an army officer, was posted there. • In 1960 he went back to England to complete his studies. • He graduated in English literature in 1970 at the University of Sussex. • He completed an M.A. degree in the same subject in 1971 at the University of East Anglia and started writing. • In 1978 he published his first novel, The Cement Garden. • In 1998 he won the Booker Prize with Amsterdam. He has written many other works and won several prizes and awards, and lives in Oxford with his family.

WORK

The Cockroach1 is evidence that even today satire is necessary to show the corruption and vice that can dominate politics and make one forget its true purpose – serving people’s needs. Inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Cockroach is a political satire in which the main character, Jim Sams, undergoes a stunning metamorphosis. Unlike Kafka’s protagonist, who wakes up one morning transformed into a cockroach, here it is the cockroach that turns into a man, the Prime Minister himself. Sams’ mission as Prime Minister is to introduce Reversalism – an economic policy which reverses the flow of money so that employees pay employers, cashiers pay customers. Reversalism stands for all Brexit policies, which McEwan intends to criticise. Sams discovers that all politicians are actually cockroaches like him, now in human form. Almost three hundred years after Swift’s satire of politics, McEwan’s bitter satire is as hard on the corruption of this world as Swift‘s was. 1 cockroach: scarafaggio

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

T24 A cockroach rules the country 30 The cockroach, which used to live beneath the Palace of Westminster, seat of the UK Parliament, has arrived at 10, Downing Street and realises he has transformed into the Prime Minister. He meets his collaborators and is instructed on his next moves in Parliament. UNDERSTAND 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is Sams’ new body like?

2 Does he remember when and why he left Westminster?

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature. For a good while he remained on his back (not his favourite posture) and regarded his distant feet, his paucity of limbs1, with consternation. His own little brown legs, for which he was already feeling some nostalgia, would have been waving merrily in the air, however hopelessly. He lay still, determined not 5 to panic. He was beginning to understand that by a grotesque reversal his vulnerable flesh now lay outside his skeleton, which was therefore wholly invisible to him. All this was worrying enough, but as he came more fully awake he remembered that he was on an important, solitary mission, though for the moment he could not recall what it was. I’m going to be late, he thought, as he attempted to lift from the pillow a head that must 10 have weighed as much as five kilos. Only now, as this head slumped back, did he begin to see through to the far side of sleep and bring to mind a mosaic of memories, impressions and intentions that scattered as he tried to hold them down. Yes, he had left the pleasantly decaying Palace of Westminster without even a farewell. That was how it had to be. Secrecy was all. He had known that without being told. But when exactly had he set out? Certainly 15 it was after dark. Last night? The night before? 1 paucity of limbs: esiguità degli arti

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The Restoration and the Augustan Age

3 What is Sams’ schedule for the morning?

4 Who is waiting for the Prime Minister?

5 What is his special adviser’s advice?

6 Is the will of the people important for Sams’ special adviser?

But now, dammit, there came a tapping sound and before he could respond, the door to the bedroom was opening. A young woman in a beige trouser suit stood on the threshold and gave a brisk nod before entering. 20 “I tried phoning but I thought I’d better come up. Prime minister, it’s almost 7.30.” He could think of no response. The woman, clearly an aide of some kind, came into the room and picked up the empty bottle. From his bed he aimed for an inarticulate sound, somewhere between a groan and a croak. Not bad. “Perhaps after breakfast you could take a … I should remind you. It’s Wednesday. Cabinet 25 at nine. Priorities for government and PMQs at noon.” 2 Prime Minister’s Questions. How many of those had he crouched through, listening enthralled3? How familiar he was with the opposition leader’s shouted questions, the brilliant non sequitur replies, the festive jeers4 and clever imitations of sheep. It would be a dream come true, to be primo uomo in the weekly operetta. But was he adequately prepared? No 30 less than anyone else, surely. As soon as the aide had left the room, he pushed away the covers and managed at last to swing his tuberous legs on to the carpet. He observed with detachment the automatic speed with which his hands tied his laces, and then, back at the bathroom mirror, his tie. Waiting for him in the hallway at the foot of the stairs was a group of very young men and women, each holding a folder. Respectfully they murmured, “Good morning, prime minister,” in a 35 soft, uneven chorus. None of them dared look at him directly while they waited for him to speak. A door swung open and they went through. “Your coffee’s in here.” They were in the Cabinet room. His special adviser, if that was what he was, said, “We need a plan. And quick.” “You’ve said it yourself. Prorogue parliament for a few months. Astound the bastards. Or even better, 40 change tack. Swing” “Really?” “I mean it. You’ve got to swing –” “Clockwise?” “Yes! Parliament will fall at your feet. You’ll have a majority – just.” “But the will of the p–” “Gullible wankers. It’s a parliamentary democracy and you’re in charge. The house is stalled. “The whole thing’s a mess. Jim, time to call it off.” Then he added softly, 45 “It’s in your power. It’s my job to keep you in office and this is the only way.” (Abridged) 2 he had crouched: si era acquattato

3 enthralled: attonito

4 festive jeers: festose esclamazioni

ANALYSE 2 Answer the questions. 1 How does Sams react when he realises he is no longer an insect? 2 What opinion does Sams have of political affairs? 3 What aspects of the political words does the extract highlight? Choose all the correct options. a

the dumb deference to power

the respect for the will of the people

the desire to keep one’s position at all costs

the contempt for parliamentary institutions

the lack of competence of politicians Are these aspects mostly negative or positive?

INTERPRET 4 Swift makes horses into perfectly rational beings, while McEwan transforms cockroaches into men of power. Which satire is most effective in your opinion?

Ideas for your map: SATIRE

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3T HE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE KEY WORDS THINKING SKILLS

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share 1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Write a definition for each. 2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words for each point, or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class, in groups or with a classmate. Describe 1 The Great Plague and the Great Fire were terrible events. 2 The French influence dominated the Restoration Age. 3 The Way of the World is the best comedy of the Restoration Age. 4 The comic epic novel was inspired by Cervantes. Explain 1 The Glorious Revolution was caused by the fear of a Catholic heir on the throne of England. 2 The comedy of manners satisfied the need for entertainment of the Restoration audience better than the heroic play. 3 Satire was the dominant genre in both prose and poetry. 4 Robinson Crusoe is the embodiment of the new mentality of the age. Justify 1 The Bill of Rights paved the way to constitutional monarchy in the UK. 2 Many new genres contributed to the development of clear prose in the Augustan Age. Compare 1 Whigs and Tories were very different parties. 2 The mock-heroic poem and the epic comic novel are similar in some aspects, Assess 1 The commercial expansion of the UK caused more social problems than it solved. 2 The conventions of plot, character and style in novels were similar for all novelists.

STORYTELLING

3 Pantomime (1978) is a satirical reinterpretation of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe written by the West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott ( p. 530). In Act I Harry, an English hotel owner, rehearses an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, where Friday, played by Jackson, Harry’s creole servant, is the master and Robinson, played by Harry and later renamed Thursday, is the ‘white savage’. HARRY ... and, anyway, he comes across this man called Friday. JACKSON How do you know I mightn’t choose to call him Thursday? Do I have to copy every ... I mean, are we improvising? HARRY All right, so it’s Thursday. N ow continue their dialogue reinventing what Robinson says about his first encounter with Friday in Defoe’s novel. Write a three minute-long script and act it out before the class, then vote for the best version.

WRITING

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay highlighting similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • Love and marriage in the plays of the time • The power of satire to improve man and/or society • The realism of the various novelists • The role of the novel in improving social manners

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IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

work / social interaction

power / war / empire

political representation / politics

independence / freedom religion / morality

realism / the economic man

entertainment / the comedic

satire

marriage / love

sustainability

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme work / social interaction. Step 1 Read this short description of the bourgeois work ethic: The spirit of individualism with its ethic of self-help and frugality were significant factors in the development of the middle classes. Hard work and industriousness were stressed as pillars of the bourgeois work ethic; if these tenets were refused, failure would follow but if they were accepted, even after errors, success would certainly follow. Step 2 Focus on the idea of the bourgeois work ethic, and discuss its validity in today’s post Covid 19 pandemic reality. Present any alternative ethic concerning a person’s work. Step 3 Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view. 2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about work / social Interaction. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719)

German Miss Sara Sampson (G.E. Lessing, 1755) The heroine rebels against her father and the world he stands for, but she is finally reconciled with him.

Italian Bottega del Caffè (Carlo Goldoni, 1750) The play shows the Venetian merchant class. Latin Georgics (Virgil, c. 29 BCE) Manual work is given dignity and value. Art The Spinners (Diego Velázquez, 1657) Women workers in the tapestry workshop of Santa Isabel, Spain.

French The bourgeois play: Diderot (1713-84) theorises the need and the form of a play dedicated to the middle classes.

Robinson colonises his island by hard work; he reconciles himself with his father’s work ethic. Physics Work is the energy transferred from one body to another thanks to a force applied along a displacement.

Spanish Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605–15) The fall of the nobles and the rise of the bourgeois class. Philosophy A Second Treatise of Government (John Locke, 1689) Locke discusses the nature of work as the foundation of the right to private property. 167

THE ROMANTIC AGE (1776–1837) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Nature: love it, or fear it?

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Nature can be varied and stunning. Look at the two paintings. What do they make you feel and think of? Add more words if you want to. fear / death / fascination / delicacy / impotence / danger / powerlessness / horror / vastness / beauty / smallness / wonder / hope 2 Look at the paintings and answer the questions. Almond Blossom 1 What are the blossoms like? Do they form a pattern? 2 The sky is turquoise blue, and the almond tree is the first to bloom in spring; how could these details relate to Van Gogh’s nephew? 3 What feelings does the painting inspire in you? The Shipwreck

Interactive analysis

4 Are the seamen recognisable? Why?/Why not? 5 Are the sea and the sky light or dark? Why? 6 If you were a seaman in this sea, how would you feel?

Which is which? 3 What is sublime? Tick! 1

high mountain ranges

animals grazing in peace

deep chasms

violent storm and seas

shepherds and country villages

volcanic eruptions

avalanches

harvests and gardens

Key words • The beautiful = anything that is pleasant in nature and causes admiration and joy • The sublime = anything that is terrible in nature and causes pain and danger, but also pleasure. • awe = a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

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▲ Vincent Van Gogh, Almond Blossom (1890) Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890), a post-Impressionist painter, arrived in Arles, South France, in March 1888; the fruit trees in the orchards were about to bloom, and he was so excited by the light that he painted one painting a day of fruit blossoms. In 1890 he painted Almond Blossom, a delicate still life for his newborn nephew Vincent Willem.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping in texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ William Turner, The Shipwreck (1805) William Turner (1775–1851), a Romantic landscape painter, retained a lifelong passion for the sea. This painting may have been inspired by an actual shipwreck, or by a poem republished in 1804.

Ideas for your map: NATURE

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HISTORY AND SOCIETY LEARNING DIGITAL • The American Revolution • The French Revolution • The First Industrial Revolution PPT PDF

Key Facts The age of revolutions The American Revolution

1606

THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA

The Romantic Age: History and Society

History narrated: The age of revolutions ( Digital resources, Study Booster)

The French Revolution

1789

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION After King Louis XVI convened the Three Estates in order to raise taxes the Third Estate (98% of the population) assembled separately in protest. In July, the Bastille was stormed and taken by a Paris mob and the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen. It asserted the principles of popular sovereignty. In Britain there was at first sympathy with the French revolutionaries. However, the British establishment, especially the aristocrats, condemned the revolution. IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative.

The Industrial Revolution

mid-18th century

1 riot = rivolta / assemblea 2 to assert = dire / asserire 3 constituency= seggio / circoscrizione 4 parliamentary seat = seggio / seduta parlamentare 5 secret ballot = tiro / voto segreto 6 franchise = diritto di nascita / voto

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CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY AND MANUFACTURING The invention which had the greatest effect on industrialisation was probably the steam engine. In 1769, James Watt developed a way to use the power of steam to work machinery such as pumping engines. These started to be used in mines, for digging machinery to deepen and extend the canal network. It made production machinery more efficient. Simple machines such as James Hargreaves’s ‘Spinning Jenny’ permitted spinning and weaving, two essential stages in the production of cloth, to be speeded up. The use of natural water power from fast flowing rivers to operate the machinery resulted in even faster production. Thanks to the agricultural revolution and Britain’s success in international trade, many more people became richer and invested in industry. The new industries attracted thousands of workers; Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester grew into industrial towns, which were dirty and polluted by the smoke and waste from factories.

The Romantic Age – Key Facts

1620

THE 13 COLONIES The New England colonies, or Northern colonies, grew out of the original settlements of the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts in 1620. In the Middle colonies, most colonists were of Dutch or German origin. In the Southern colonies the wealthy planters were of mixed origin and much of the population consisted of enslaved Africans. The first slaves for tobacco plantations had arrived in Virginia from Africa in 1619.

1793-4

THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI AND THE TERROR The Convention abolished the monarchy, declared France a republic and ordered the execution of the King. The Reign of Terror decided by the Committee of Public Safety under the leadership of Robespierre began. The execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793 alarmed all European sovereigns and the Terror caused horror and disgust also in many supporters of the Revolution. England led the coalition against France in 1793.

1775-83

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR At the end of the 18th century the relations between the 13 colonies in North America and the mother country were not good because of the problem of taxation and representation. All this led to riots. At the Boston Massacre in 1770 five colonists were killed by British soldiers. At the 1173 Boston Tea Party, in protest at British taxes, a cargo of tea was emptied into the harbour by American colonists disguised as natives. In 1775 the war broke out, and on 4th July 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence. After the final victory at York (1781), Great Britain signed the Peace of Paris in 1783: Article 1 acknowledged the United States’ existence as free, sovereign, and independent.

1803-15

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS After establishing the Consulate with a coup d’état Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor in 1804; he fought against various coalitions of European powers, usually led by the UK. The British fleet, led by Admiral Horatio Nelson, resisted until the final victory with Wellington in 1815. The Congress of Vienna re-established the balance of powers that existed among European powers before the events in France.

1795-1833

1811-16

THE REFORMS

THE LUDDITES

William Pitt’s government restricted the right of individuals to assemble publicly (Seditious Meetings Act, 1795) and the formation of societies or organisations that favoured political reforms (Combination Acts, 1799). The latter made trade unions illegal. Positive actions in the social sphere came with the Factory Acts in 1833, which limited the hours children and women could work in factories. Inspectors started being sent to factories, and other acts were passed. The problem of political representation was first faced with the 1832 Reform Act; it abolished the ‘rotten boroughs’, seats in Parliament for constituencies that had few or no voters (for example Manchester) and no secret ballots, where it was easy for candidates to buy votes (hence the word ‘rotten’). Parliamentary seats were extended, so that 22 new boroughs, mostly industrial towns, were represented in Parliament. The franchise was granted to property owners, mostly the middle class, and that meant that about 20% of men could now vote.

Machines caused injuries and the Luddites, a radical faction, destroyed them as a form of protest because they thought that machinery would supplant the human workforce. The movement spread throughout England from 1811 to 1816, but was suppressed with legal and military force.

Ideas for your map: REVOLUTION

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RIGHTS FOR ALL

A house for all

AGENDA 2030

The rise of cities in the 18th century The population of Britain grew rapidly in 18th century Britain, from around five million people in 1700 to nearly nine million by 1801. People moved to northern England, towards rapidly growing industrial cities such as Manchester and Leeds, in order to work in the new factories and textile mills that started being opened there from the 1750s onwards. Many 18th-century towns were dirty, overcrowded and generally insanitary places. Alongside the stinking1 rivers and pollution of cities, open sewers ran through the centre of numerous streets. The roads were unpleasantly dusty in the hot summer months, and they were almost impossible to use in the winter owing to their muddy and flooded condition. The network of narrow alleys and lanes from medieval times caused traffic congestion.

Improvements (late 18th century): ▲ London map, 1750

1. oil lamps were more commonly used along the streets of many towns, paid for by householders out of local rates. 2. towns and city authorities alleviated the huge problems of traffic congestion by laying out new roads and avenues. 3. huge areas of decrepit housing were gradually cleared in order to make way for new toll roads2, built to accommodate the ever-increasing levels of horse-drawn traffic.

The rise of cities in the world by 2050

1 stinking: puzzolenti 2 toll roads: strade con pedaggio 3 overburdened: sovraccaricati

The world’s cities occupy just 3% of the Earth’s land, but account for 60–80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions. Half of humanity – 3.5 billion people – lives in cities today. Adequate housing is a human right, and the absence of it negatively affects urban equity and inclusion, health and safety, and livelihood opportunities. An estimated three billion people will require adequate and affordable housing by 2030, mostly in three regions, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia. Other consequences of rapid urbanisation are overburdened3 infrastructure and services (such as waste collection and water and sanitation systems, roads and transport), worsening air pollution and unplanned urban growth.

DISCUSS 1 Choose the area of the world you want to consider between either: • Europe: agree on three measures to be taken to improve traffic and reduce pollution. • one among Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia Agree on three measures to be taken to grant adequate housing to people in before 2030. Present the positive effects that these measures will have on these people’s lives. PROJECT 2 Organise a communication campaign focusing on Goal 11 in your community. Step 1 Objectives What are you trying to achieve with your material (inform, convince, engage, etc. the target audience)? Step 2 Audience Who is the material you will prepare aimed at? Step 3 Content Are there enough jobs? Can your children walk to school safely? Can you walk with your family at night? How far is the nearest public transport? What’s the air quality like? What are your shared public spaces like? Step 4 Campaign materials What kind of materials do you intend to prepare? Slogans, articles, information sheets, posters, videos (either digital – PowerPoint presentation, Instagram stories, Prezis etc. – or tangible – brochures, billboards, etc.)? Present your action plan to the rest of the class with at least one sample of the campaign materials.

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Ideas for your map: SUSTAINABILITY

p. 247

FILMS FOR THOUGHT FACT FILE •P andora: a resource-rich moon with a diverse ecosystem • The Na’vi: indigenous population, living as part of a network of flowing energy • Eywa: trees and plants of Pandora forming a huge worldwide sentient brain • Earth: resources almost all used up • Human invaders: set on colonising planets to plunder their resources; greedy for unobtanium, a vital mineral, in Avatar and the brain enzymes from tulkuns in Avatar: The Way of Water

AGENDA 2030

Mother Pandora and the myth of the good savage

James Cameron’s Super/Natural, a nature documentary series for National Geographic, and both Avatar films share an aim: to encourage and inspire people to care about nature again. He has also revitalised the myth of the ‘good savage’: “ I think the goal of either of my major projects right now, Super/Natural or Avatar: The Way of Water, is to remind us how important nature is to us, and put us back into that kind of childlike perspective where we have this sense of wonder and connection to nature. Kids feel connected to nature. They’ll go out, they’ll come back filthy, they’ll come back having caught things and played with them and studied them. Then they leave it behind and we move on and we live in an increasing state of nature deficit disorder.”

(James Cameron)

Avatar (2009) Jack Sully, a paraplegic Marine, uses his blue Na’vi Avatar to infiltrate the Omatikaya clan on behalf of Colonel Quaritch. While Jake begins to bond with the Na’vi and falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, a Na’vi Princess, the Colonel decides to attack the Omatikaya Home tree, forcing the soldier to take a stand – and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora. After he falls in love with Neytiri, who has become his teacher in the ways of the Na’vi, he chooses the world of Pandora. He becomes the Clan War Leader and drives the colonial invaders from Pandora.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) About ten years after the end of the war against the human invaders, Jake Sully is Chief of the Omatikaya clan: Neytiri and Sully have a family of five children. The Colonial invaders return and the Colonel, now a blue Na’vi Avatar, hunts Jake for revenge. The family is forced to become refugees and flee to the land of the Metkayina clan in the Pandoran oceans. There they learn ‘the way of water‘, i.e. the uses and manners of the Metkayina clan. The Colonel first tortures the indigenous tribes and then orders his soldiers to kill tulkuns (whale-like sentient animals) in order to draw Jake out. Quaritch kidnaps three of Sully’s children; Sully and Neytiri lead in the fight; in the end they defeat the invaders again.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 How does Jack Sully’s story represent the myth of the good savage living in a state of nature? Web quest 2 Search the web for clips of both films. Here are some suggestions: • Avatar: Eywa chooses Jack with the magic floating seeds. • Avatar: The Way of Water: Lo’ak, one of Jack‘s children, meets one of the tulkuns and befriends him.

Ideas for your map: SUBLIME IN NATURE

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Pre-Romanticism

LEARNING DIGITAL

A European movement at its beginning

Pre-Romanticisim PPT

The Romantic Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

Thomas Gray DT18 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

IN ACTION

New trends in poetry

Key words

1 Which past meaning of the word ‘romantic’ is identical to the modern one(s)? Choose from among the following. a

nything extravagant and A unreal (18th century)

sentimental and often A melancholy state of mind (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

P oetic, magic, obscure for man’s spiritual activity (German writers)

A new sensibility towards natural things and man’s nature (English poets)

▶ Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Dream of Ossian (1813)

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The Romantic Age – Pre-Romanticism

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

The Scottish heritage • Robert Burns DT19 Auld Lang Syne DT20 A Red, Red Rose • Sir Walter Scott, Waverley DT21 The Highlander

• As for the Scottish tradition, Robert Burns (1759–96) was the national poet of Scotland; he wrote lyrics and songs in Scottish and in English. A ploughman and farm labourer, he was interested in early Scottish ballads and folk songs, which he first heard from his own mother. Romantic poets saw in him a precursor because of his sensitivity to nature and his passionate search for freedom and intense feelings. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), a historian and novelist, published Waverley, a historical novel about Scottish history, in 1814; the work recalls the years of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie against the Hanoverians ( p. 125). Sir Walter Scott is credited with having been the father of the historical novel, and he was the model for Alessandro Manzoni ( p. 183). • Edmund Burke (1729–97) redefined aesthetics with his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). The ‘Beautiful’ is associated with smallness, smoothness, delicacy, proportion and balance, and it comforts men. The ‘Sublime’, instead, is vast, infinite, and magnificent, and it causes awe, a unique mix of attraction and fear, pleasure and terror ( p. 168). Both the Gothic novel and poems about the supernatural by Samuel T. Coleridge ( p. 198) are examples of the sublime.

IN ACTION English in action 2 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to affect = influenzare / affezionarsi 2 to promote a student / an idea 3 to advocate = promuovere / difendere 4 to favour = preferire / favorire 5 to inspire = espirare / ispirare

European movement

new sensibility

Pre-Romanticism

philosophical contributions

Graveyard poetry

primitive poetry and national folklore

German Sturm und Drang

immagination and impulses

Edmund Burke sublime vs beatiful

mortality and melancholy

Ossianic poems

Madame de Staël

nature as emotional reality

Jean-Jacques Rousseau good savage and social contract

Thomas Gray and Ugo Foscolo

Scottish ballads and folk songs

Giovanni Berchet

Gothicism Mary Wollstonecraft women’s rights

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is Romanticism? Include a definition, areas of development and relationship to past tradition. 2 What Romantic writers/movements can you name outside Britain? 3 Write a few notes about the new trends in poetry and philosophy. Include authors with their works. • Graveyard poetry • Primitive poetry • Rediscovery of national folklore • Beautiful vs Sublime • The good savage • Defence of women’s rights

Ideas for your map: THE GOOD SAVAGE

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WOMEN THAT A new world for women MADE HISTORY

AGENDA 2030

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

by Mary Wollstonecraft WORK

LIFE • Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97), a philosopher and a writer, had a difficult childhood. Her father was violent and had financial difficulties. • In 1792, in Paris, she had an affair and her first daughter, Fanny, was born. She observed the French Revolution firsthand and strongly admired it. • In the same year, the treatise to defend the equality of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was published. • Back in London she attended a radical group whose members were William Godwin, Thomas Paine, William Blake, and William Wordsworth. • Between 1796–97 she had an affair with William Godwin, an anarchist philosopher. Later they got married because she was pregnant. • She died of septicaemia 11 days after the birth of her second daughter.

In 1791, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a French politician, presented the Report on Public Instruction to the French National Assembly; public education was to be promoted, but not for women. In the treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft rejected this claim as unfair of democratic ideals and attacked men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Thus, upper-class women were turned into coquettes, frivolous wives and irresponsible mothers. Instead, she asked for women to be treated as rational beings. The Rights of Woman was a seminal work for the suffragette movement at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. They wrote the Declaration of Sentiments to advocate equal rights for women.

T25 Education for women makes for a better society 31 1 One cause of [women’s] barren blooming1 I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses2 than rational wives. […] The civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their 5 abilities and virtues exact respect3. […] But, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off4 the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason5, else this flaw in your NEW CONSTITUTION, the first constitution founded on reason, will ever show that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen 10 front6, will ever undermine morality. […] 2 The education of women has, of late, been more attended to7 than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments8: meanwhile, strength of body and 15 mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world9— by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress; they paint, and nickname God’s creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for the seraglio10! Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world? 20 1 barren blooming: sterile crescita 2 alluring mistresses: amanti seducenti 3 exact respect: esigere rispetto 4 wards off: confutare 5 want reason: mancano di ragione (non sono esseri razionali)

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The Romantic Age

6 rears its brazen front: solleva la sua fronte sfacciata 7 attended to: curata 8 a smattering of accomplishments: una infarinatura di risultati

9 rise in the world: avanzare (socialmente) nel mondo 10 fit for the seraglio: adatte per il serraglio (l’harem)

3 I must declare, what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners, from Rousseau to Dr. Gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weaker characters, than they would otherwise have been; and, consequently, more useless members of society. […] As blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to 25 keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything. The sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming that they reigned over them.

▲ Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

11 grovel contentendly: umiliarsi tutta contenta

4 If all the faculties of woman’s mind are only to be cultivated as they respect her 30 dependence on man; if, when she obtains a husband she has arrived at her goal, and meanly proud, is satisfied with such a paltry crown, let her grovel contentedly11, scarcely raised by her employments above the animal kingdom; but, if she is struggling for the prize of her high calling, let her cultivate her understanding without stopping to consider what character the husband may have whom she is destined to marry. Let her only determine, 35 without being too anxious about present happiness, to acquire the qualities that ennoble a rational being, and a rough, inelegant husband may shock her taste without destroying her peace of mind. She will not model her soul to suit the frailties of her companion, but to bear with them: his character may be a trial, but not an impediment to virtue.

CHECK OUT 1 Match each paragraph (1–4) to the correct summary (a–d). Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

Paragraph 4

a Women should stop trying to be the wives men desire, but develop as rational beings, and thus become best companions of any man. b Women’s current poor education transforms them into frivolous creatures; this unfair treatment will not be amended in the new French constitution. c Philosophers writing about the education of women have only worsened their condition by keeping them in a state of ‘innocence’. Even women’s sensuality has been used to make them into objects of pleasure for men. d Women’s current poor education makes them unfit to fulfil any social function, such as looking after family and children. DISCUSS 2 Answer the questions. 1 The author analyses the causes of civilised women’s poor condition in Wollstonecraft’s time. How does their condition compare with the present reality of women in the Western world? 2 Wollstonecraft accuses tyrants and sensualists of keeping women blind. Do you think her accusation holds today, too? WATCH, READ AND THINK 3 Search the web and watch the clip where Amy March, a beautiful young woman with no personal means, discusses with Laurie, a close friend and a rich boy, how different married life is for a woman and a man. The story comes from a novel, Little Women, published by Louisa May Alcott in 1868.

4 Here are some articles from the Declaration of Sentiments: The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. 1. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. 2. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. 3. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men – both natives and foreigners. 4. Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. 5. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. 6. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. 7. He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master – the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. Compare these articles to what Amy March and Mary Wollstonecraft claim. Which is more modern in your view?

Ideas for your map: WOMEN’S RIGHTS

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The Romantic movement

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

LEARNING DIGITAL The Romantic movement PDF

The good and brutal savage

IN ACTION English in action 1 Write the correct word. 1 rebellion a rebellious person

The Romantic movement unofficially began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 ( p. 193), and developed with two generations of poets and new forms of the novel. Its influence extended to the US in the 1820s and into the Victorian period, where poets such as Alfred Tennyson ( Digital resources) are sometimes identified as late Romantics. Emotions, self-expression and individual feelings were exalted over reason and the senses over intellect. The rediscovery of emotions was part of the reaction to Rationalism, and Romantic poets cultivated reverence for nature, individualism, idealism and an interest in the sublime.

Nature, imagination and escapism

2 independence an

person

3 pollution a

city

4 ugliness an depressed area

Main themes of Romanticism

Faced with the Napoleonic Wars on the Continent and the effects of the Industrial Revolution at home, many authors desired to return to nature and celebrated it in their works. They protested against the ugliness of the growing industrialisation of the century: the machines, factories, slum conditions and pollution. Nature was often seen as a ‘mother’ or even as an absolute. For Wordsworth ( p. 192), nature was a God because Divine Power was intrinsic in nature. Through nature, artists could escape from an unsatisfying present into a better world. Another escape route was the exotic, with real and imaginary distant lands of long ago and the dream, sometimes filled with supernatural events. Poets strongly believed in the power of imagination, seen as the source of poetic inspiration. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) presents the distinction between primary and secondary imagination ( p. 198), while Shelley’s Defence of Poetry (1840) presents the poet as a prophet; he guides humankind to a true understanding of reality and also to rebellion against all forms of oppression and dogmas ( p. 211).

The ‘good savage’ and the child Individuals were now considered more important than society thanks to Rousseau’s ideas even though the factory system tended to made them replaceable parts in a system. The Romantics believed in the natural goodness of men, instead. The ‘good savage’s and the child’s nature and emotions are pure and can help human beings to find again the innocence lost in civilisation and urban life. The child was revered because of a capacity for wonder, which the adults had to rediscover in their hearts; the innocence of the child is a cardinal point in William Blake’s collection, Songs of Innocence, compared in a complementary relationship with Songs of Experience ( p. 185), and the ideal of the perfect communion with nature in William Wordsworth’s poetry ( p. 193).

Individualism and rebelliousness ▲ William Turner, A Water Mill

The character that best represented the ideals of rebellion and independence was the Byronic Hero, the protagonist of many of Lord Byron’s works. The Byronic Hero was modelled on Milton’s Satan, which the Romantics saw as the real protagonist of the epic poem Paradise Lost, and on Byron’s own character and biography, with influence from Gothic novels ( p. 182). Examples of similar characters in the Gothic novel before Byron’s works were Manfred, the ominous hero-villain of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), and the brooding, guilt-haunted monk Schedoni of Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797). Percy B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1820) reinterpreted the myth on new grounds, but the most significant representations of the Byronic Hero were Victor Frankenstein and his creature and alter ego, ‘the monster’ with no name in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus ( p. 224). The personality of the Byronic Hero has also inspired many characters in films.

Revolution and democracy ▲ L.J.M. Daguerre, The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel (1924)

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The Romantic Age – The Romantic movement

IN ACTION Across time and space

Who is afraid of fairy tales? In the Grimm Brothers’ second edition, the fairy tales became simple moral lessons on good vs evil and all horror elements were either toned down or cut out altogether. In 1937, with damsels in distress, romance, musicals numbers and formidable villains, Walt Disney’s film adaptations made the ‘happily-ever-after’ theme the norm. After the Equal Rights Amendment for Women in 1979, fairy tales also changed; the stereotypical themes of knights in shining armour and of wide-eyed and helpless women were criticised. One more change came with James Finn Garner, who published Politically Correct Bedtime Stories in 1994. His work is a brilliant satire on the trend toward political correctness: the fairy tales are rewritten so that they represent what a politically correct adult would consider a good and moral tale for children. Heroes becomes villains and viceversa, and most female characters save their own lives with no help from Prince Charming. Little Red Riding Hood lectures the hunter on how she can solve her own problems without any interference and Cinderella decides to forgo her makeover in favour of comfortable clothes. Work creative 2 Did you have tales read to you when you were a child? What do you remember about them? How did you feel? Would you tell them to your own child, and how? 3 Choose one traditional fairy tale and rethink it so that it is ‘modern’. What would you change about it? Draw your characters and make a cartoon.

MIND MAP

emotion and feelings

nature: mother and escape from cities

Romantic artists, with the exception of Byron, were seldom actively involved in the political life of their time, but they all shared a keen interest in the development of a more egalitarian society, which was also stimulated by the French Revolution. They searched for a more accessible and therefore ‘egalitarian’ language in their poems, but their choices varied a lot. Some looked for inspiration in ‘primitive’ forms of art such as ancient ballads and folk songs, others favoured complex forms such as the ode and even long narrative forms. However, the variety of choices shows that they felt free to explore with no rules and pre-established conventions in art.

The love for folklore and Gothicism Scholar Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) coined the term ‘folk spirit’, while Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm collected popular fairy tales to describe the essence of a people, and as a means of better defining the folk-spirit of the German people. In England, Shakespeare was rediscovered as a spontaneous, natural, and English genius ( p. 76). A ‘rage for roots’, i.e. a desire to rediscover one’s national language and cultural heritage, spread throughout Europe; it also meant a keen interest in myths and folklore, especially those of the Middle Ages and its art, architecture and oral tradition. The fairies, witches, demons and monsters of the medieval ballads reappeared in a new genre, the Gothic novel ( p. 182). Coleridge’s poetry also frequently takes a Gothic turn, as, for example, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( p. 200) and Christabel.

Themes of Romanticism

supernatural and imagination

national identity

egalitarian society

individualism and rebellion

good savage and the child

CHECK OUT 1 Choose the correct alternative.

The Romantic Movement The Romantic movement lasted from 1798 (publication of (1) Lyrical Ballads / Ossianic poems) to 1837, Queen Victoria’s (2) death / ascent to the throne, though its influence also stretched into the second half of the 19th century and to the U.S.A. Romantic poets rediscovered the power of (3) magic / imagination and stressed the role of (4) abstract ideas / senses and emotions. Imagination is associated with (5) powerful artistic creation / fanciful stories: the (6) poet / scientist is a prophet. Nature is seen as a (7) passive background / spiritual reality, and it is always (8) rejected / admired for its beauty. (9) Emotions/Reason (10) are / is fundamental in human experience, and the ideal model for sensibility is the (11) child / educated man together with the (12) good / brutal savage, characterised by (13) brutality / innate goodness uncorrupted by evil and civilisation.

Society was seen as a (14) negative / positive influence on man’s growth and the (15) primacy of / subordination to rules of the individual was established; in literature this was seen in the (16) acceptance / rejection of rules and embodied in the figures of the Byronic Hero and the Titan Prometheus. From the (17) political / social point of view, Romantic writers aspired to an egalitarian society, in the wake of the initial enthusiasm for the (18) French / American Revolution, and were convinced that (19) the consent of the governed / monarchical power was the basis for a well-governed society and that (20) a revolution / reforms (21) was / were needed to create an informed and involved citizenry. Romantic writers also developed a taste for the return to (22) one’s national / a universal language and cultural heritage, with the myths and folklore of the (23) medieval / classical period; part of this interest was the interpretation of Shakespeare as the (24) national, spontaneous / perfectly-educated genius and the interest in the (25) study of the Classics / supernatural.

Ideas for your map: EMOTIONS

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Romantic poetry

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

LEARNING DIGITAL Romantic poetry PDF

Romantic poets redefine poetry

IN ACTION

AGENDA 2030

Across time and space

What will happen to our lakes? The Lake District has been experiencing erratic weather patterns, with disastrous floods in 2009 and drought in 2010, and more changes are expected: - falling lake levels in summer - more concentrated pollutants - poorer water quality - erosion caused by heavy rain - more toxic blue-green algae - more and new species of insects 1 Think about a lake near where you live. Is it in good condition?

Two generations of Romantic poets In poetry, the strict rules of Neoclassicism were rejected because they limited the poet’s expression of unrestrained emotions. Romantic poets are traditionally divided into two generations, but each poet developed his own sensibility and style. Their poems ranged from the child-like and obscure poems respectively of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) by Blake, to the simplicity of the ‘language really spoken by men‘ of Wordsworth (Preface to The Lyrical Ballads, 1800), from the imitation of popular ballads in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) up to the elegant stanza of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) by Byron, and Keats’ and Shelley’s refined imagery in their Odes.

The precursor William Blake (1757–1827 p. 184) was a precursor of Romanticism; he broke away from the Age of Enlightenment and from conventional forms. His poetry is based on symbols and also includes social themes such as the exploitation of child labour in factories and the degradation of the city of London during the Industrial Revolution.

The first generation of Romantic poets Romanticism fully developed with the poets of the first generation, also known as the Lake Poets because of their attachment to the Lake District in the north-west of England. The first generation included William Wordsworth (1770–1850 p. 192) and Samuel T. Coleridge (1772– 1834 p. 198). They were friends and lived and worked together in the Lake District to write the first collection of English Romantic poetry, Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798. They agreed that Wordsworth’s poetry was to be dedicated to the natural, while Coleridge would write poems of the supernatural by adapting forms of popular tradition to literary use. As young poets, their imagination was also fired by the spirit of change brought on by the French Revolution, although they were later disillusioned. They rejected what was meaningless and artificial in literature, and looked for something natural and genuine; for them poets were prophetic figures who could regenerate mankind spiritually.

The second generation of Romantic poets The poets of the second generation, George G. Byron (1788–1824 p. 206), Percy B. Shelley (1792–1822 p. 210) and John Keats (1795–1821 p. 214) were associated by an intense emotional life and a tragic early death. They lived through the disillusionment of the Reign of Terror and the rise of the Napoleonic Empire, and sought beauty in Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean. Shelley and Byron were rebels, defying all social conventions and left England to live on the Continent, as truly cosmopolitan citizens of the world. Keats shared with them a love for Greek art and also had a very short life. They exploited all forms of poetry, with elaborate language, rich in metaphors and classical allusions. They also reinterpreted classical forms such as the ode according to the new Romantic sensibility. Project 2 Engage in a campaign about cleaning up lakes.

Step 3 Agree on the four top measures/remedies and on who will present which. Step 4 Organise a communication campaign focusing on the technology or remedy that your group has been assigned.

Step 1 Gather information with your group about the latest development in cleaning up water, such as floating fountains for aeration and bio haven floating islands.

Step 5 Follow the guidelines for a good project ( Digital resources).

Step 2 Compare your results with your class.

Step 6 Present your action plan to the class.

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The Romantic Age – Romantic poetry

▲ The village of Glenridding and

Ullswater Lake in the Lake District

MIND MAP

William Wordsworth, Samuel T. Coleridge

Romantic poetry

George Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, John Keats

William Blake

Lake poets

rebels – tragic death

Natural vs supernatural

Precursor – symbols and social themes

second generation

CHECK OUT 1 Choose the correct alternative.

The two generations of romantic poets Two generations of Romantic poets are usually distinguished, with Blake and Radcliffe as (1) imitators / precursors; Wordsworth and Coleridge agreed on the shared project of (2) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner / Lyrical Ballads. In the second generation, Byron, Shelley and Keats all had (3) short / long lives and different interests; Shelley and Byron were (4) rebellious / conformist individuals while Keats was fascinated with (5) Italian / Greek art. FIRST

2 READ an article about John Keats. Six sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences (A–G) the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is an extra sentence which you do not need to use. A If that’s not a heroic combination

John Keats

B who suffered and achieved so much

The story of John Keats has an irresistible pathos: the humble origins, the early death of his father,

C how can art help us enjoy and endure D which was born in a desperate age

his mother’s disappearance and reappearance, illness and (again) early death, the noble labours as a trainee doctor, (1)

, the peerlessly precocious flowering (he was 23 when he wrote most of his

E but while they instantly catch our attention and keep our sympathy

great poetry), the appalling illness, the courage with which he endured it, the tragic journey to Rome

F the even more noble aspirations as a poet

time at such an early age. These things alone are enough to make Keats seem heroic. (3)

G which by their nature allow us to hear Keats’ speaking voice

that lived beneath and within the tragic narrative of his circumstances. This is where his real heroism

and his miserable end. It’s hard – no, it’s impossible – to think of another writer (2)

in such a short , they can

also detain us in a way that blinds us to the actual texture of his personality – his everyday self, the self resides. We can see it, of course, in the poems – in their profound concern for the deepest questions in life (What is suffering for? (4) it even more clearly in his letters, (5)

? How much does love weigh compared to death?). We can find . The man we discover is fierce in his dislikes, generous in his

friendships, passionate in his loves, funny, generous, big-hearted, clever, compassionate, brilliant in his apprehensions about the business of writing, seriously good fun. (6)

I don’t know what is. (From The Guardian)

Ideas for your map: REBELLION

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Romantic fiction

IN ACTION Write creative 1 Choose a setting and three characters, and outline your Gothic tale. Fixed elements in the setting castles / dungeons / labyrinths / subterranean passages / dark battlements / hidden panels / trapdoors / moonlight on dark nights / rugged mountains / icy cold wastes Stock characters tyrants / bandits / maniacs / persecuted maidens / femmes fatales / monks / nuns / magicians / vampires / werewolves / monsters / demons / angels / fallen angels / revenants / ghosts / perambulating skeletons

Romantic fiction New forms of novels Romanticism also renewed fiction; the Gothic novel totally broke away from the tradition of the realistic and bourgeois novel of the 18th century: it focused on the sublime and extreme emotions, and led to an excess of sensationalism, which was criticised in Jane Austen’s novels of manners. The interest in traditional folklore and the past characterised the Historical novels by Sir Walter Scott.

The Gothic novel • A new sensibility The name ‘Gothic’ refers to medieval Gothic architecture, which was often chosen as a setting for this type of novel. The heyday of the Gothic novel was the 1790s, starting with Horace Walpole (1717–97) and his The Castle of Otranto (1764) and then continuing with Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823 p. 220) and her The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797), Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) with The Monk (1796), and finally Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), by Mary Shelley (1797–1851 p. 224). It favoured the sublime over the beautiful, and presented horror, fear and obscurity as a source of pleasure. It aimed at exciting the sensibility of the reader, who looked for thrill and fear, by presenting supernatural situations. Its mix of fixed elements in the setting became stereotyped and the basis for today’s horror story.

• Themes The themes of Gothic fiction were death and madness, with a passion-driven hero, or villain, hunting a young, innocent woman, and other stock characters. The atmosphere was dominated by mystery, terror, suspense and also the macabre. Frankenstein summed up many of the new themes, characters and stylistic innovations of Romanticism, and also added to Gothic fiction themes of larger significance, such as the desire for ultimate knowledge and power through science (the discovery of the secret of life with Doctor Frankenstein). With Frankenstein, the Gothic novel came to an end, but its themes and style continued in the USA. in Edgar Allan Poe’s horror stories (published mostly in the 1830s–1840s p. 232), which developed the genre from the psychological point of view.

The Historical novel • The glamour of the past The Historical novel presents a past society in which great events are reflected by their impact on the private lives of fictional ordinary. The purpose is to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with varying degrees of fidelity to historical fact.

• The rediscovery of the Scottish heritage

▲ Waverley in Highland garb,

illustration from an 1893 edition

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

The Scottish heritage Sir Walter Scott, Waverly DT21The Highlander

182

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), a Scottish historian and novelist, wrote the first Historical novel, Waverley, in 1814; his works became a model for aspiring national literatures across continental Europe. Scott’s narrator is omniscient and intrusive. He guides the reader to the interpretation of the facts in a plot that is often loose and picaresque. Scott presents a precise political vision of English history. The protagonists of the novels embody the future union of two contrasting factions; they side with both, usually for personal reasons (family ties, desire for adventure, romanticism, a love story). As for historical fidelity, Scott’s novels are more convincing when it comes to Scottish history, which was more familiar to him. In Waverley, the Jacobite rebels and the Hanoverians were the two opponents in a moment of dramatic historical crisis in 1745, during the last Jacobite rising. Waverley has sympathies for the Jacobite cause while being a Hanoverian. Despite his Jacobite sympathies, he accepts the established order as represented by the Hanoverians as historically inevitable.

The Romantic Age – Romantic fiction

The novel of manners • Fiction faithful to reality

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Social conventions in the early 19th century

The novel of Manners was anti-Romantic because it was similar to the realistic novel of the early 18th century; man is a social being who actively participates in the life of their society, not an isolated individual or a rebel defying all institutions. One of the most important writers of the novel of manners and one of the first great women novelists was Jane Austen (1775–1817 p. 238); her works focus on the ordinary life of provincial England. Her heroines think critically of the social conventions of their world. They are even capable of going against them if this is necessary to pursue their goals of a happy life and marriage. Jane Austen is a master in the use of dialogue and irony; dialogue is fundamental to understand the characters’ personalities and interactions, while irony is how the narrator expresses her critical views concerning both characters and conventions.

IN ACTION Across time and space

2 Is Manzoni similar (=), or different (≠) to Scott? Circle the correct option.

Manzoni’s The Betrothed After Scott’s example, the greatest master in the art of the Historical novel was Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), the great Italian Romantic poet and novelist, with his The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi, second edition 1840). The story is set in Lombardy in the 17th century, during the rebellion of the Milanese people against the Spanish domination and at the time of the plague, where Manzoni investigates the patriotic ideal of national identity in the 18th-century Hapsburg domination of Italy. Manzoni‘s narrative style is characterised by the presence of an ironic-intrusive omniscient narrator, a well-organised plot and historical accuracy in the presentation of facts, places and main characters. Renzo and Lucia, the protagonists, are two young silk-weavers of humble origins from a small village near Lecco on the shores of Lake Como. Don Rodrigo, the local bravo, prevents them from marrying and Renzo and Lucia experience a lot of misadventures, including the great crisis of their time, the plague that struck Milan in 1630, until Providence and their faith guides them to happiness.

MIND MAP

• Plot: = / ≠ • Characters: = / ≠ • View of history: = / ≠ • Narrator: = / ≠ 3 Are Scott’s and Manzoni’s models still valid in your opinion? Work creative 4 Choose a period you like from your country’s history and make up one or two fictional characters from it. You also draw them or make a cartoon to tell their story to the class.

Romantic fiction

Gothic novel

Historical novel

Novel of manners

sublime, horror, thrill and fear

romantic nationalism

Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho

fictional characters in a past age

science

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

death, madness, villains and heroines

compromise and ordinary heroes

Anti-Romantic

landed gentry marriage

Alessandro Manzoni

historical crisis

Jane Austen

realism and irony Sir Walter Scott

CHECK OUT 1 Write a few notes about Romantic fiction. • The Gothic novel

• The Historical novel

• The novel of manners

Ideas for your map: EMOTIONS

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183

William Blake

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(1757–1827)

Romantic poetry

LEARNING DIGITAL W illiam Blake and Songs of Innocence and of Experience PDF

• DT22 The Blossom (from Songs of Innocence) • DT23 The Sick Rose (from Songs of Experience)

Profile Blake discovered his talent for poetry only as a young adult and always associated poetry with the visual arts. A self-taught visionary poet and a rebel at heart, he rejected rationalism; for him Isaac Newton, with his laws of motion and of gravity, represented the rationalism and scientific materialism that he abhorred. He favoured imagination, which for him was God himself operating in the human soul. He believed in an ideal spiritual world, and that his visions gave him an understanding of the true essence of angels and his dead brother. He rejected all abstract generalisations in favour of particular experiences, which he presented through his symbols. He combined drawings with the poems themselves. The most important literary influence in his life was the Bible, with its powerful language rich in images and repetitions. His interest in the French and American Revolutions was so strong – though not strictly political – that he published The French Revolution in 1791 and America, a Prophesy in 1793. His most popular work, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (published as one volume in 1794), was followed by highly symbolic works known as the ‘prophetic books’, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He imagined the fate of the human world as determined by the battles between reason and imagination, lust and piety, order and revolution. The contrast between order and revolution is best expressed in Blake’s two opposing characters Urizen and Ore: Urizen represents the jealous and fearful God of the Old Testament, oppressive in State and Church, while Ore, the perpetually young figure of Christ with the sword, overthrows the established order and brings danger and liberty. His most important collection was Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, followed by Songs of Experience in 1794.

MIND MAP

visionary poet

imagination

visions

William Blake

the Bible

prophetic books

symbols

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 Which was Blake’s most important collection?

1 What kind of poet was Blake?

4 What is imagination to Blake?

2 How important were drawings and symbols to Blake’s art?

5 What does he talk about in his prophetic books?

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Ideas for your map: IMAGINATION/THE CHILD

p. 247

LIFE 1757 Blake was born in London into a family of humble origins and was mostly educated at home.

1772 KEY FACT He was apprenticed to an engraver as he had shown a talent and love for drawing.

1779 He attended the Royal Academy of Arts and was deeply influenced by Michelangelo’s style.

1782 He met Catherine Boucher, his future wife; she was illiterate and he taught her to read and write.

1787 KEY FACT His youngest brother died at an early age.

1788 KEY FACT He started experimenting with relief etching to produce his illuminated manuscripts, and also taught his wife about it.

1791

The French Revolution

WORKS

1790–93

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

IN ACTION Across time and space

Il fanciullino, or the Eternal Child, inside us

Il fanciullino is the title of the poetic manifesto that Giovanni Pascoli first published in a literary magazine in 1897. This child represents a purer and more authentic portion of the self which is closer to life thanks to his sensibility, and he is essential to poetic creation.

Quando la nostra età è tenera, [il fanciullino] confonde la sua voce con la nostra, e dei due fanciulli che ruzzano e contendono tra loro, e, insieme sempre, temono sperano godono piangono, si sente un palpito solo, uno strillare e un guaire solo. Ma quindi noi cresciamo, ed egli resta piccolo; noi accendiamo negli occhi un nuovo desiderare, ed egli vi tiene fissa la sua antica serena maraviglia; noi ingrossiamo e arrugginiamo la voce, ed egli fa sentire tuttavia e sempre il suo tinnulo squillo come di campanello. (Abridged from Pensieri e Discorsi, 1907)

1 Answer the questions. 1 What distinctive traits does the fanciullino in us have when we are children? 2 What happens to the Eternal Child when we become adults? 3 How similar is the fanciullino to the child in Blake? ▶ Giovanni

Pascoli

1800 He moved to Felpham, West Sussex, to illustrate the works of William Hayley, a minor poet who was his patron for a while.

1804 He returned to London and worked mostly for patrons, often quarrelling with them.

1827 He died before completing the watercolours for Dante’s Inferno.

1793

• America, a Prophecy • Visions of the daughters of Albion 1794 Songs of Innocence and of Experience p. 185

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are companion volumes ‘Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul‘, as stated in the subtitle. Innocence to Blake meant joy and spontaneity, with no perception of evil, from simple childlike innocence, to a vision of a universe of love and harmony, but with no self-awareness. Experience destroys this ‘state of the soul’ because it leads to an awareness of evil and ugliness, but it is also associated with energy and power. The more disconcerting themes of the second volume showed Blake’s increasing interest in the French Revolution. For Blake, ‘innocence’ is not superior to ‘experience’, and neither is ‘experience’ superior to ‘innocence’; man needs to pass through both as they are ‘complementary opposites’. All the poems are accompanied by Blake’s own drawings, painted in pastel colours and usually decorated with beautiful leaves and flowers in Songs of Innocence, and by darker illustrations in Songs of Experience. His aversion to the printing press and mechanisation in general led him to develop his own technique of illuminated printing, which he claimed to have learnt from his dead brother Robert in a vision.

Themes • Innocence and childhood Songs of Innocence describes the joy and purity of childhood, while Songs of Experience shows the corruption and disillusionment of adult life. Many of the poems in Songs of Innocence are pastoral, with green hills, spring meadows, lambs, shepherds, and children, all protected by caring adults and God. In Songs of Experience egotism and cynicism replace concern and belief. The Child, a key figure present in many forms (a lamb, a chimney sweeper or just a child) looks at the world with eyes full of wonder and is spiritually wise. In the procession of Holy Thursday Blake contrasts the child’s innocence with the corruption of institutions, especially the Church. In The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence, the children dream of salvation brought by an angel, who takes them out of their black coffins; in the corresponding poem The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience ‘A little black thing‘ in the white snow is abandoned by hypocritical parents who ‘have gone to church to pray‘. Also, the two paired poems Holy Thursday contrast the procession of angel-like figures in Innocence with the poverty and misery of abandoned children in Experience. 185

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

• Exploitation and corruption Blake was deeply sympathetic to the suffering of ordinary men, women and children and in particular to the exploitation of children during the Industrial Revolution. London reveals his indignation at the complacency of the Church regarding social abuse. Blake attacked the priesthood of the Church of England for promoting a rational religion; he believed that divinity lay in the individual.

• Energy and sexuality Blake presented themes variously connected with energy, vitality and also sexuality. In The Blossom from Songs of Innocence, both the Sparrow and the Robin reach the Blossom, which may symbolise the act of union of lovers, while in The Sick Rose from Songs of Experience, the Rose and the Worm can be seen as lovers in a destructive relationship.

Style Blake stressed the primary importance of individual imagination in the creative process, rejecting the neoclassical emphasis on order and clarity. All the poems contain symbols, complex ideas made accessible, but which keep their potential ambiguity. The Lamb is charming in its simplicity and purity, but naïve, while the Tyger is powerful, mysterious and fascinating, but deadly. Both are perfect in their own ways, and their complementary natures can only be seen through intuition. The poems in Songs of Innocence use plain language and simple forms, such as the ballad stanza, and many repetitions; the poems in Songs of Experience are complex and difficult to understand and use longer stanzas.

▲ Engraving by William Blake for the cover of the collection

MIND MAP

Innocence

joy – spontaneity

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Experience

childhood

evil – ugliness

complementary opposites

illuminated printing

energy – power

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence to its correct half. 1

Innocence and experience are opposites but

a they complement each other.

The poems of Innocence are simpler in form and language than

b ideas accessible.

The poems are illustrated with Blake’s own drawings, lighter

c coexist in the collection.

The joy and purity of childhood are opposed to the

d or darker depending on the songs.

The child looks at the world with eyes full

e corruption and disillusionment of adult life.

Blake was sympathetic to the suffering of those relegated to the status of

f of wonder and wisdom.

Themes variously connected with energy, vitality and also sexuality

g mechanical instruments in an industrialised world.

Symbols make complex

h those of Experience.

186

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: INNOCENCE/THE CHILD/EXPLOITATION

p. 247

William Blake

T26 The Lamb 32 Songs of Innocence

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

In The Lamb Blake talks about a common animal and turns it into a symbol of innocence; the Lamb is also the Infant Child, Jesus Christ, and both the poet and the reader share something of the purity and innocence of the Lamb.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

name • nature • gives • finally • asks the Lamb who has made it; he tells the Lamb what God (2)

The poet (1)

to it and repeats his question. The poet answers his own question and tells the Lamb that God has its own , Lamb. He claims that since he is a child in (4)

(3)

with the name of God. He (5)

, they are both called

blesses the Lamb.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Little Lamb, who made thee1? Does thou2 know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed3 By the stream and o’er the mead4; 5 Gave thee clothing of delight5, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales6 rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? 10 Does thou know who made thee?

1 thee: arcaico per you 2 thou: arcaico per you 3 bid thee feed: ti ha nutrito 4 By… mead: vicino al fiume e sul prato 5 clothing of delight: bel pelo gioioso 6 vales: poetico per valley (valli) 7 Gesù si definisce mite (‘meek‘) nei Vangeli ed è l’Agnello di Dio

2 Answer the questions.

1 What does God give the Lamb?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee; Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. 15 He is meek7, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by his name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! 20 Little Lamb, God bless thee!

ANALYSE

2 Does the Lamb know who made him?

3 Who is the Lamb compared to? 4 Why is the Lamb similar to Jesus?

4 Answer the questions.

3 Complete the text about the meaning of the poem. religious • symbol • personifies • joy • unaware Blake (1) (2)

UNDERSTAND

1 Is the condition of the Lamb happy or sad, joyful or desperate? 2 What can you infer about the nature of the creator on the basis of his creature?

the ‘lamb’ and makes it into a which combines both (3)

conventional ideas, such as peace, (4) However, the Lamb is (5)

and and meekness.

of his origin.

3 The poem is written in imitation of nursery rhymes, poems or songs for children, which have with a simple rhyme scheme, a lot of repetitions and a refrain. They are very musical and pleasant to listen to. Which of these characteristics can you find in the poem? INTERPRET 5 Is the Lamb a totally positive creature? Why?/Why not? PDF

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T27 The Tyger 33 Songs of Experience

The Tyger from Songs of Experience is the complementary poem to The Lamb from Songs of Innocence. The poet also asks the Tyger questions to understand how and who made it, but he can’t answer his own questions and the Tyger remains powerful and mysterious.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

fire • happy • vision • addresses • necessary The poet (1)

the Tyger; his many questions are about the place where it was made, and

what was (2)

to make it out of (3)

; he names the eyes, the heart and

the brain of the Tyger. The poet wonders whether God smiled and was (4) completed the Tyger, and returns to his (5)

once he had

of the beautiful deadly creature.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame1 thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine2 eyes? On what wings dare he aspire3? What the hand dare seize4 fire?

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Can the poet answer his questions about the Tyger as he did with the Lamb? 2 Why does the oxymoron ‘fearful symmetry’ make the Tyger sublime? 3 What opposites does the Tyger combine in its nature? 4 Why is ‘could’ changed into ‘dare’ in the last stanza? 5 The rhyme scheme is simple (AABB) but the poem has a strong rhythm, and more consonant than vowel sounds; how does this fit its contents? DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Innocence is the opposite of experience. Group A believe that the Tyger (experience) and the Lamb (innocence) are perfect opposites. Group B believe that they are similar and also complementary. 188

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is the poem going to be about a real or an imaginary Tyger? 2 Where and when was the Tyger created?

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews5 of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, 12 What dread hand? and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil6? what dread grasp7 16 Dare its deadly terrors clasp8?

3 Has the poet been asking questions or making statements?

When the stars threw down9 their spears10, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? 20 Did he who made the lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye 24 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1 frame: forgiare 2 thine: arcaico per your 3 aspire: levarsi (in volo) 4 seize: afferrare

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

4 Which word changes in comparison with l.4?

5 twist the sinews: torcere i tendini 6 anvil: incudine 7 grasp: stretta PDF

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8 clasp: afferrare 9 threw down: gettarono 10 spears: dardi Digital resources, Study Booster

William Blake

T28 London 34

Songs of Experience

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation Interactive analysis

London has no companion poem in Songs of Innocence; this may suggest that for the city of London there is no other reality than the poverty, misery and oppression that the poem presents.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

cries • health • miserable • passes on • imprisoned • freedom • loses A speaker wanders through the streets of the city of London. He perceives the river Thames as (1)

and the lives of some of the city inhabitants – Man, the Infant, the Chimneysweeper,

the Soldier and the Harlot – as (2) full of their repeated (3) (5)

. All the people are impotent and suffer, and the air is ; they have no (4)

at risk to earn a living, and both the soldier and the prostitute sell their bodies in order

to survive. The soldier (6) (7)

▲ Engraving by Blake for London

1 charter’d: imprigionato 2 mark: noto 3 woe: dolore 4 ban: divieto 5 manacles: manette 6 appalls: atterrisce 7 hapless: sfortunato 8 Harlots: della prostituta

. The chimney-sweeper puts his

his life in the indifference of power, and the prostitute

her misery as a venereal disease to her infant baby.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d1 Thames does flow. And mark2 in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe3.

In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban4, The mind-forg’d manacles5 I hear

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Who/What creates the manacles?

How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls6, And the hapless7 Soldiers sigh 12 Runs in blood down Palace walls

2 What institutions are presented in the poem?

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots8 curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear 16 And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

3 Are the inhabitants of London individuals, or types?

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Who should protect the Chimney-sweepers, and doesn’t? Similarly, what happens to the Soldier? 2 The newborn babies are ‘blasted’ by the curses of their impoverished prostitute mothers. What does this image suggest? 3 What have the institutions to do with the state of oppression and misery of the city? 4 Oppression dominates the city; what is the reality of London as seen by Blake?

5 The word ‘charter’d’ is repeated twice; to what effect? Which other word is repeated, and why? 6 What does the oxymoron ‘the Marriage hearse’ convey? 7 What rhyme scheme and stanzaic form are used in the poem? What other literary devices are present? INTERPRET 4 Blake was writing at a time when the Industrial Revolution was at full pace. How are its effects felt in the poem? PDF

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189

THE ARTS

Does science make wonders? William Blake abhorred cold science and as an artist he symbolised his view in the figure of Isaac Newton, in the eponymous work. The figure of Newton becomes the symbol of blind science, only focused on its own methods and results and thus ignoring the rich life of nature. Other artists reacted differently to the preponderance of science, from the Romantic painter William Turner’s ambiguity about it in his depiction of the train, one of the most important innovations of the Industrial Revolution, to its exaltation in Futurism, an avant-garde movement of the early 20th century. The Futurists made the train one of the symbols of the perfection of machinery and technology, together with the car and the plane.

Newton (1795) by William Blake Blake represents the scientist sitting on a rock at the bottom of the ocean and drawing his diagrams on a scroll1 by his feet; behind him, the rock is covered with rich flora and fauna. 1 scroll: pergamena

Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) by William Turner An early steam train crosses the River Thames over Maidenhead Railway Bridge; its black silhouette with blazing headlights2 comes out at full speed from the pouring rain, in an indistinguishable background. 2 blazing headlights: fari splendenti

190

The Romantic Age

Treno notturno in corsa (Night Train Running) (1926) by Pippo Rizzo This Futurist painting represents a night train moving at full speed, its wheels reddened by the force of its acceleration in a geometrically defined landscape.

THINKING ROUTINE Newton

Night Train Running

1 Match each compositional element (1–7) in the picture to the correct description (a–g). 1

the rock

a triangular in shape; an image of the Trinity

flora and fauna

b with straight lines and sharp angles

Newton’s gaze

Newton’s posture

Newton’s body

Newton’s profile

f brightly coloured; with soft lines; rich and varied

diagram

g iridescent and textured

c naked d hunched e cold and callous

2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Newton use his compass for? 2 Where does the scroll seem to emanate from? 3 What is Newton looking at, and what is he ignoring? 4 Focus on Newton’s face and posture. Does he look passionate or cold? Rain, Steam and Speed

4 Mediation In the Futurist Manifest (1909) Marinetti writes:

Noi canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l’orizzonte, le locomotive dall’ampio petto che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d’acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aeroplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta. Summarise what Marinetti says in two sentences. 5 Answer the questions. 1 Is Rizzo’s painting a good example of the poetics of Futurism? Why?

3 Answer the questions.

2 What colours are present in the painting? Which one attracts your attention the most?

1 What is the darkest thing in the painting?

3 Is the train presented as a dynamic or static reality?

2 Are there any human figures in the painting? Where? How big are they?

4 Apart from the train, can you identify any other objects or any person?

3 Is the natural world clearly outlined, or are its contours vague and undetermined?

Debate 6 Debate the statement in groups.

4 The train and the bridge are the only straight dark lines in a fluid environment. Does the train look threatening?

Science and technology are necessary for the progress of the world.

5 Do you think the artist wanted to celebrate the train, the greatest technological innovation of the time, or was he hinting at some potential danger coming from modern technology?

Group A believe that science and inventions are for the best advancement of mankind. Group B believe that they are harmful and dangerous.

Ideas for your map: SCIENCE

p. 247

191

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

LEARNING DIGITAL

William Wordsworth (1770 –1850)

W illiam Wordsworth and Lyrical Ballads PPT PDF

William Wordsworth • From Lyrical Ballads DT24 The new poetry • From Poems in Two Volumes DT25 My heart leaps up DT26 Tintern Abbey

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They said of this…

Wordsworth is most famous for his short poems, most of which were written between 1798 and 1808. The grandeur and beauty of the magnificent landscapes in the Lake District deeply affected his poetic production. The early nineteenth century was a time of industrialisation and Wordsworth looked for refuge from the ugliness and the false superficial life of cities in beautiful nature. He often talked about his own experiences and feelings as he shared the romantic notion that personal experience is the only way to gain living knowledge. At first, his poems were not appreciated in literary circles because they were considered to be too simple in content, themes and language, but his reputation increased with time. Wordsworth wanted The Prelude, a long spiritual autobiography based on his travels through Europe, to be his greatest work; he never completed it and it was published by his wife after his death in 1850. A supporter of the new government’s republican ideals during his visit to revolutionary France in 1790, Wordsworth later rejected the radicalism represented by the French Terror. His friendship with Coleridge was decisive in helping him develop his poetic skills even though it came to an end because of their artistic differences; his sister Dorothy was a supportive presence in his life, and her diary reveals how significant their shared experiences and their common sensibility were to both.

A brother’s and a sister’s eye for nature

Dorothy’s diaries show how brother and sister scrutinised nature with the same attention and love.

Saturday, 11th — A fine October morning. The colours of the mountains soft, and rich with orange fern; the cattle pasturing upon the hilltops; kites sailing in the sky above our heads; sheep bleating, and feeding in the water courses, scattered over the mountains. They come down and feed, on the little green islands in the beds of the torrents. Looked down the brook, and saw the drops rise upwards and sparkle in the air at the little falls. We walked along the turf of the mountain till we came to a track, made by the cattle which come upon the hills... (From Dorothy Wordsworth’s Diaries, 1800)

1 Answer the questions. 1 Is Dorothy good at describing nature? 2 Would you be so perceptive if you were in a mountain landscape with so many ordinary elements? 3 What do you expect her brother’s poetry to be like considering that they shared not just their experiences in nature, but the same love for it?

192

▲ Landscape in the Lake District

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1770 KEY FACT Wordsworth was born in the Lake District, a mountainous region in North West England.

1777 His mother died and five years later he lost his father, too. His guardian uncles helped him to continue his studies until his graduation from Cambridge.

1790 He went on a walking tour of the Alps and Italy, and then to France.

1795 After receiving a legacy, he settled with his sister Dorothy at Alfoxden, Dorset, where he met Samuel T. Coleridge; they became friends.

1798 KEY FACT Coleridge and Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads. They travelled to Germany with Dorothy.

1798

WORKS

Lyrical Ballads

1799 Wordsworth and his sister moved to a cottage in Grasmere, in the Lake District.

1801 He married Mary Hutchinson and continued writing poems.

1807 He published his second collection of short poems, Poems in Two Volumes.

1807

Poems in Two Volumes p. 195

1817

Biographia Literaria

1841 He was made Poet Laureate, the UK official poet who writes poems for special occasions; his reputation kept growing until his death.

1850

The Prelude (posthumous)

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The birth of Romantic poetry: Lyrical Ballads

Key words

Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems composed by William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge; they cooperated to create the first work of Romanticism in England aiming at challenging the standards of neoclassical verse. The first edition was anonymous, and Wordsworth wrote all but four of the poems in the collection; the most notable contribution by his friend Coleridge was the opening poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ( p. 200). The second edition came out in 1800 with a Preface by Wordsworth only. He claimed that the passions of ‘rustic life’ should be chosen as an example to imitate. With rural life, passions develop best, they are simpler and therefore easier to observe, and they are associated with the beauty of nature. He developed his theory of imagination; memory made past realities present in the mind as if they were real. In the Preface he presented the nature and steps of poetic creation; all art comes from experience and feelings which are lived again through memory. The Preface is seen today as a manifesto of English Romantic poetry. Coleridge also presented the aims and principles of the collection in his later work Biographia Literaria; Wordsworth was to be the poet of the natural, while Coleridge’s poetry was to be ‘romantic, or at least supernatural‘, their methods and style coming from their different subject matter.

2 Match each word (1–5) to the correct definition (a–e). 1

refuge

emotion

rustic

idyllic

feeling

a a conscious state of the mind caused by experience b a state when you feel protected from any danger or ugly reality c peaceful and picturesque d something plain/typical of the countryside e an unconscious state of the mind caused by experience

Themes • Nature Nature is the most important theme of Wordsworth’s poetry. He describes beautiful rural landscapes and characters, mainly from the Lake District, and the feelings and emotions that come with these beautiful sights: joy, pleasure, but also melancholy and sadness when he thinks of the isolation of people in towns. For him, nature is a divine reality, perfect and pure. It is man’s teacher and moral guide, because communion with it teaches the poet to have genuine feelings and to be happy.

• The child Wordsworth learnt from Jean-Jacques Rousseau the idea of the excellence of the child; he simplified Rousseau’s views on education and presented the child as someone who lives in spontaneous communion with nature and is less under the influence of corrupted society.

• Active memory Another significant theme of Wordsworth’s poetry is ‘recollection in tranquillity‘, an active state of memory where experience and emotions are not simply remembered but relived; active memory maintains the connection between the poet and nature even when he has to abandon the idyllic reality of the natural world and return to ordinary life, and it renews the poet’s communion with nature. 193

Language and style

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Most of Wordsworth’s poetry is lyrical, based on direct autobiographical experience; he describes the powerful emotions that he felt on specific occasions, such as a walk in the Lake District or even in the heart of London, and which came to him through his senses. Wordsworth knew that the poems in Lyrical Ballads were different from the conventional verse of the day, and described the revolution of the new poetry in the Preface. The two main ideas concerning style are the need to reform the language of poetry – which, according to Wordsworth, had become artificial – and a new definition of poetry as the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings‘. As for language, he favoured a poetic style as simple as the language of everyday life, ‘the language really spoken by men‘; unlike 18th-neoclassical and highly ornate poetry ( p. 130), Wordsworth’s short poems have uncomplicated syntax, a simple language and few allusions.

MIND MAP

friendship with Coleridge

William Wordsworth

personal experience

Lake District

passions of rustic life

Lyrical Ballads

nature

feelings and emotions

the child

imagination – memory

lyrical poetry

divine reality

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What view does Wordsworth have of life in the city and in nature? 2 Was Wordsworth’s poetry immediately appreciated? 3 When was Lyrical Ballads published, and what kind of poems did Wordsworth and Coleridge contribute? 4 What do nature and the child represent in Wordsworth’s poems? 5 How does memory help the poet to remain immersed in nature? 6 How innovative are Wordsworth’s language and style?

194

▲ Dove Cottage in the Lake District, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: NATURE/THE CHILD

p. 247

William Wordsworth LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T29 I wandered lonely as a cloud 35 Poems in Two Volumes

Wordsworth saw the flowers with his sister Dorothy on a walk near Ullswater Lake. She wrote about this in her diary, but in the poem Wordsworth pretends to be alone.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. company • wind • remembers • happy • walking

EMOTIONAL LEARNING The poet is (1) (2)

around when he sees many flowers, daffodils: they are moving in the , and they look joyful. The poet starts feeling as (3)

when he (4) (5)

as they are, and

them in moments of tranquillity, he feels joyful again and in the of the flowers.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er1 vales2 and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host3, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering4 and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle5 on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line 10 Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads6 in sprightly7 dance.

1 o’er: over 2 vales: poetico per valleys 3 host: miriade 4 Fluttering: che ondeggiavano 5 twinkle: scintillano 6 Tossing their heads: ondeggiavano il capo 7 sprightly: vivace 8 Out-did… in glee: superavano in gioia le lucenti onde 9 could... gay: non poteva che essere felice 10 oft: poetico per often 11 vacant: svagato 12 pensive: pensoso

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What was the poet doing when he saw the daffodils? 2 Where did the poet see the flowers?

3 How many flowers did he see?

The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee8: 15 A poet could not but be gay9, In such a jocund company: I gazed – and gazed – but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

4 Does the poet analyse or enjoy the experience?

For oft10, when on my couch I lie 20 In vacant11 or in pensive12 mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What simile shows daffodils as infinite? 2 Why does the poet use hyperbole in ll.9 and 11? 3 What is the role of memory in poetic creation? 4 Is the vocabulary used in the poem artificial or simple, concrete or abstract? INTERPRET

4 Focus on the last stanza and put the events inspiring the creation of a poem into the correct order. The creation of the poem begins in a state of excitement. The emotion comes back to the poet’s mind when his mind is at peace. An emotion is born in the mind of the poet, similar to the original one. An experience/character from humble and rustic life causes a strong emotion in the poet.

5 Can you think of situations in nature where feelings could be different, and not so positive? PDF

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• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

T30 Composed upon Westminster Bridge 36 Poems in Two Volumes

The sonnet describes London and the River Thames, viewed from Westminster Bridge, on a quiet morning. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

calm • River • silent • buildings • admiration The poet voices his (1)

for the city of London, still quiet and (2)

in the

early morning light, and invites his readers to do the same. He contemplates all the (3) shining in the clean air. The (4)

of the city strikes him, as well as the (5)

Thames moving slowly. Now read the poem and check your answers.

1 Dull: insensibile 2 doth: poetico per does 3 garment: abito 4 steep: inondò

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull1 would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth2, like a garment3, wear 5 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep4 10 In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What place is being described? 2 What can the poet see in the distance beyond the city’s buildings? 3 What time of day is it?

ANALYSE 3 Choose the sentence that best describes the octave (O) and the sestet (S) respectively. a

The poet compares the city to exotic places.

The poet comments on the city’s beauty and peace.

The poet describes late evening London in detail.

The poet describes early morning London in detail.

4 Answer the questions. 1 What does the beauty of the City lie in? 2 Is the city opposed to nature, or is it seen as part of it? 3 How similar/different are the poet’s and the City’s feelings? 4 What effect is achieved by the recurring use of personifications? 5 Identify the rhyme scheme; is the sonnet Petrarchan or Shakespearean? 6 How would you define the language of the poem? INTERPRET 5 Compare the City of London, as Wordsworth describes it, with your own view of London, or another city you are more familiar with. We saw our cities busy with people, but also deserted and silent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Have we regained something of the beauty of our cities seeing them empty? 196

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PDF

▲ Claude Monet, The Thames below Westminster (1871) Your text explained

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ACROSS TIME The art of contemplation AND SPACE

L’infinito (1819)

by Giacomo Leopardi The poem was composed in the autumn of 1819, after Leopardi unsuccessfully tried to escape Recanati, his home village in the Italian region of Le Marche. The poet fancies himself contemplating the hedge which prevents him from seeing the ‘last horizon‘; the limitation opens his mind to imagining (nel pensier mi fingo) the infinite. His philosophical and human meditation starts from here; its foundation lies in the very core of Leopardi’s poems, the theory of il piacere, which all men desire but which none can reach, and the power of suggestion of the vago and indefinito, which Leopardi will present in his notes of 1820 in the Zibaldone (171, 12–23 July 1820): L’anima si immagina quello che non vede, che quell’albero, quella siepe, quella torre gli nasconde, e va errando in uno spazio immaginario, e si figura cose che non potrebbe, se la sua vita si estendesse da per tutto, perché il reale escluderebbe l’immaginario.

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle1, e questa siepe, che da tanta parte dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude. Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati 5 spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quiete io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco il cor non si spaura. E come il vento odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello 10 infinito silenzio a questa voce vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno, e le morte stagioni, e la presente e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa immensità s’annega il pensier mio: 15 e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare. (From Canti, XII) 1 Il monte Tabor, una collina appena fuori Recanati. ▲ The surroundings near Recanati

MEDIATION 1 Answer the questions. 1 What can the poet see? 2 What does he imagine? Quote the lines and summarise them in your own words. 3 How does he feel? 4 What can he hear? 5 What can he imagine? 6 How does the poet feel at the end? 7 Is the infinito a real presence, something to be felt and perceived through the senses? 8 Summarise Leopardi’s words from Zibaldone. Is he talking about memory, or imagination? 9 Leopardi describes the pleasure that derives from the indefinito in another note in Zibaldone:

Una fabbrica [un edificio] una torre ecc. veduta in modo che ella paia innalzarsi sola sopra l’orizzonte, e questo non si veda, produce un contrasto efficacissimo e sublimissimo tra il finito e l’indefinito. What causes the pleasure for Leopardi? 10 Compare Wordsworth’s poems and poetic production, in particular I wandered lonely as a cloud, with this poem. Discuss their content and the idea of the infinite that they reveal. 11 According to Wordsworth, before birth the soul already exists in heaven, and youth recollects the heavenly state of the soul; the poet, as a child, can recall this heavenly state. The theme of remembrance is central in Leopardi, too: for example, he dedicated some Canti to the ‘remembrance’ of his own past, among which the most touching are, Alla luna, A Silvia, and Le ricordanze. Does he have the same positive view of remembrance that Wordsworth has?

Ideas for your map: IMAGINATION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

LEARNING DIGITAL S amuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner PPT

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Profile • Both Wordsworth and Coleridge saw liberty as an eternal ideal and were initially inspired by the promise of the French Revolution. However, they abhorred the excesses of the Terror, and Coleridge did not like the principle of ‘abstract reason’ of the Enlightenment. He returned to the medieval idea of ‘the Book of Nature’: Nature contains the ‘correspondences and symbols of the spiritual world‘, which man can never fully understand. • As a literary critic Coleridge’s most important work is Biographia Literaria (1817); the ideas he presents, imagination, fancy and poetic faith, are partly derived from his studies of German Idealist thinkers, such as Immanuel Kant, and the German Romantics, such as Friedrich Schiller. These ideas are the foundation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. • Coleridge defines two types of imagination: primary imagination is common to all men and consists in the unconscious perception of the world. Secondary imagination is the poetic vision. It works upon the sensations and impressions supplied by primary imagination and, by an effort of will, it selects, orders and creates something new and beautiful. The common man can appreciate but cannot create this vision. • Fancy, dependent on and inferior to imagination, is a mode of memory which simply associates one thing with another. According to Coleridge, Wordsworth’s ‘imagination’ is actually only fancy. Coleridge also disagreed with his friend’s preference for the ‘rustic’ language of simple people. However, he rejected the poetry of neoclassical writers such as Pope as artificial. • Another important idea that Coleridge developed was poetic faith, ‘the willing suspension of disbelief‘; if a writer gives a ‘human interest and a semblance of truth‘ to a fantastic tale, the reader will enter the world of poetic illusion and suspend judgement as to whether the images of that poetic world have a real existence. In other words, the question of poetry’s reference to reality is suspended. IN ACTION English in action

Across time and space

1 Choose the correct alternative.

Poetic faith (or Suspension of disbelief) does it really work?

1 to make / do friends 2 to abandon sthg = to stop to do / doing it 3 to get married / marry a person 4 to set up / abandon a project 5 addiction / addition to opium 198

Poetic faith works not only in books, but in comics, video games, and of course films. Clark Kent’s disguise is ridiculous (a pair of eye glasses and conservative clothes), but of course nobody thinks that he is Superman.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

2 Answer the questions. 1 What makes poetic faith work when we sit in a chair and the film begins? 2 Draw your list of ten films that make poetic faith work and compare it with your neighbour’s. How different are your lists?

LIFE 1772 Coleridge was born in Devon, the youngest child of the parish vicar and headmaster of the local Grammar school.

1782 After his father’s death, he went to Christ’s Hospital School, London. He made friends with the poet Charles Lamb and fell in love with Mary Evans.

1794 With Robert Southey, a poet, he envisioned ‘Pantisocracy’, an ideal commune of perfect equality modelled upon Plato’s Republic.

1795 Since the Pantisocracy was only for married couples, he married Sarah Fricker, though he was still in love with Mary Evans.

1795 KEY FACT He met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. 1797–1798 Coleridge, Wordsworth and Dorothy lived together in Somersetshire.

1798 KEY FACT Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads. In the same year Coleridge went to Germany, where he was interested in German philosophy, especially in Immanuel Kant’s Idealism.

1800 The Coleridges and the Wordsworths moved to the Lake District. Coleridge suffered from neuralgic and rheumatic pains, and he became addicted to opium.

1804–06 After a stay in Malta, he moved to London; he spent most of his time lecturing.

1816 • Christabel • Kubla Khan

1818

1798 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner p. 200

WORKS

1816–34 He lived in his doctor’s house until his death because his addiction had become unbearable for his family and friends.

Biographia Literaria

Themes • Coleridge claimed that ‘we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not‘ (from his Biographia Literaria) and that with the supernatural ‘the film of familiarity‘ is stripped away from our eyes. He considered the supernatural to be the real essence of things, with power to change the physical universe through angels or demons or departed spirits. • Christabel, a long poem set in a Gothic castle with a deadly female vampire, takes the reader back to the Middle Ages, to an old moated castle with barons and bards. In Kubla Khan, set in the oriental city of Xanadu, he also investigated the world of the unconscious. • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner narrates the experience of an Ancient Mariner voyaging around polar regions in unknown seas; the Wedding Guest’s eyes are opened to the world of the supernatural thanks to the Ancient Mariner’s story, a clear symbol of the power of imagination to reveal the invisible world to man.

Style Coleridge’s reputation lies in two sorts of poetry: – the supernatural or demonic poems, such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel, are characterised by dreamlike verse, extremely rich sound devices and sometimes complex rhyme schemes; – t he conversation poems, such as Frost at Midnight, and Dejection: An Ode, are short personal poems of reflection, memory recollection, and sometimes confession, and have a conversational quality. MIND MAP

poet, philosopher and literary critic

traditional and literary ballad

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

unconscious and reverie

the supernatural

Kubla Khan

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Present Coleridge’s view concerning the French Revolution and liberty.

poetic faith

imagination

primary

secondary – poetic vision

2 What is imagination like for Coleridge? How does it differ from fancy? 3 What is poetic faith and why is it important? 4 What themes are present in his poems? 5 How different are Coleridge’s conversation and supernatural poems?

Ideas for your map: IMAGINATION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full plot • The mystery of a sea story • The Rime, a Reverie

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Listen on YouTube to Iron Maiden telling you the story; what strikes you about the music and the rhythm of their song?

Themes • The supernatural ▲ Cover of Iron Maiden’s album

▶ John Wilson Carmichael, Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic (1847)

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge • The curse The legends of cursed men eternally travelling at sea inspired Coleridge to draft the Mariner as a damned being, not unlike the seamen in The Pirates of the Caribbean, a modern funny version of these myths. The Wandering Jew is the man who cursed Christ on his way to crucifixion, and the Flying Dutchman was the captain of a cursed ship that never reaches port. Both challenge the gods and are fated to tell their story to all those they meet. The poem presents a convincing psychological study of the Ancient Mariner, who, feeling desperately alone on open sea, wants to die, and suffers mental and spiritual anguish. The supernatural aspect of his condition is that the Mariner is eternally trapped in the telling of his dreadful story, each time to a new listener. This is his curse. The Wedding Guest is changed into a ‘sadder and wiser man‘ after listening to the Mariner’s story. This shows that the supernatural gradually invades the space of the so-called ‘real’ world until the supernatural is the real world itself.

Structure and style The poem is divided into seven Parts, and ends with a crucial or unexpected event; it is an adventure tale with a journey at sea characterised by incidents and disasters. It also combines elements of the epic poem with the use of verse and its narrative development, and of the traditional ballad with the use of the ballad stanza and supernatural elements. The ballad was a popular form from the Middle Ages ( p. 34); the renewed interest in folklore in the late 18th century led to the publication of several ballad collections, such as Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765 p. 174). The mystery that permeates The Rime is also due to the imitation of the style and themes of the traditional ballad, where the story is fast-paced and mysteriously told with no explanation or moral. The Rime opens in abrupt and third-person narration, and it develops through continuous shifting of scenes; inexplicable natural phenomena or spirits and angels throw the Mariner into the tragedy not of unhappy love, a typical theme of the traditional ballad, but of the mysterious reality of the supernatural. In the poem, Coleridge uses the ballad stanza, a four-line stanza rhyming ABCB, although refrains are absent and the stanzas vary in length depending on the narrative. The many sound devices and repetitions make it musical and dreamlike.

Interpretations The Rime is simple on the surface as it is narrated by an ordinary seaman, and is full of realistic details concerning the journey at sea, but Coleridge has shrouded the main events, such as the killing of the Albatross or the appearance of the ghost ship, in mystery. Many questions, especially those concerning the Mariner’s power and actions, have no answers in the poem. The work is therefore open to many interpretations, all of which are correct as the poem is deliberately ambiguous. • A discussion of morality: the Mariner commits a sin, the killing of the Albatross, and after expiating it, he preaches the moral of universal love for all God’s creatures. • A discussion of Christianity: the Albatross is identified with Christ, an innocent victim, and the Mariner’s eternal tale is his punishment for killing him. • A discussion of art: the Mariner represents the poet who looks for truth and knowledge and finds it in the dreadful world of the imagination. This costs him his ordinary life. CHECK OUT 1 Complete the table with the correct information. Publication

Themes

Structure and style

Interpretations

Ideas for your map: SUPERNATURAL/SUBLIME

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T31 The killing of the Albatross 37

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. flies • refuses • stuck • South Pole • killed • followed • mysteriously • troubles • talking

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The Ancient Mariner stops the Wedding Guest, and starts (1) Guest (2)

to him. The Wedding

to listen to the Mariner; he is invited to a relative’s wedding which is about

to start, but the Mariner (3)

convinces the Wedding Guest to listen to his story. , and the ship is (5)

A storm drives the Mariner’s ship to the (4) the ice. An Albatross arrives; the crew feed it, and it (6) is set free from the ice, and sails north, (7) asks the Mariner what (8)

round the boat. The boat by the Albatross. The Wedding Guest

him. The Mariner confesses that he (9)

the Albatross. ▲ Engraving by Gustave Doré for the 1876 edition of the poem, showing the killing of the Albatross.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

It is an Ancient Mariner And he stoppeth one of three. ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering2 eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou3 me?

An Ancient Mariner meeteth1 three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.

2 Answer the questions.

‘The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin4; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din5.’ He holds him with his skinny hand6, ‘There was a ship,’ quoth7 he. ‘Hold off! unhand me8 grey-beard loon9’ Eftsoons his hand dropt he10. He holds him with his glittering eye — The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath11 his will. […]

1 meeteth: arcaico per meets 2 glittering: scintillante 3 stopp’st thou: arcaico per do you stop 4 next of kin: parente più stretto

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UNDERSTAND

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

5 din: rumore 6 skinny hand: mano ossuta 7 quoth: arcaico per said 8 unhand me: lasciami 9 loon: pazzo

1 What is the Mariner like?

2 Why is the Mariner so powerful? 3 Why is the Wedding Guest so powerless?

10 Eftsoons… he: quello immediatamente tolse la mano 11 hath: arcaico per has

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◀ The albatross is an oceanic bird with enormous wings (up to four metres) which spends most of its time flying at sea over incredibly long distances

The ship is driven by a storm towards the south pole.

‘And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o’ertaking12 wings, 20 And chased us south along.

4 How is the storm described?

‘With sloping13 masts and dipping prow14, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe15, And forward bends his head, 25 The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast16, And southward aye17 we fled. ‘And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous18 cold: And ice, mast-high19, came floating by, 30 As green as emerald20. ‘And through the drifts21 the snowy clifts22 Did send a dismal sheen23: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken24 — The ice was all between.

The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.

Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

5 Why is this land so terrible?

‘The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled25, Like noises in a swound26!

‘At length did cross an Albatross, 40 Thorough27 the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God’s name.

12 o’ertaking: irresistibili 13 sloping: inclinati 14 dipping prow: la prua che affondava 15 foe: nemico 16 blast: tempesta 17 aye: senza fine 18 wondrous: incredibilmente 19 mast-high: alti come l’albero

20 emerald: smeraldo 21 drifts: blocchi 22 clifts: crepacci 23 dismal sheen: luccichio inquietante 24 ken: arcaico per knew, riconoscemmo 25 It cracked… howled: si incrinava e ringhiava, e ruggiva

ed ululava (Tutti i verbi sono onomatopeici – suono del ghiaccio che si spezza, latrato di cane rabbioso, ruggito di leone, ululato di cane o lupo.) 26 in a swound: in chi svenga 27 Thorough: through

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‘It ate the food it ne’er had eat28, And round and round it flew. 45 The ice did split with a thunder-fit29; The helmsman steered us through30! […] And lo! The Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.

6 Why does the ice split?

‘And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, 50 Came to the mariner’s hollo! ‘In mist or cloud, or mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

The Ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends that plague31 thee thus! — Why look’st thou so?’ — With my cross-bow32 I shot the Albatross.

7 Why does the Mariner kill the Albatross?

(Abridged from Part 1)

28 ne’er had eat: had never eaten 29 did… thunder-fit: il ghiaccio si ruppe con fragore di tuono

30 steered us through: ci portò fuori 31 plague: tormentano

32 cross-bow: balestra

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Do the Albatross’s actions and nature justify its killing by the Mariner? 2 For Coleridge, Romantic poetry should be about supernatural events and characters. How many can you identify in the text? 3 What atmosphere dominates the South Pole? Is it ordinary? 4 What kind of seascape do you obtain from the combination of powerful storm and the fragile ship? Why? 5 One of the interpretations sees The Rime as a discussion of religion, but there is also superstition in the Mariner’s tale. Find evidence for both. 6 What formal features of ballads can you identify in the text? INTERPRET 4 Answer the questions. 1 The law of cause and effect is not working as it should in The Rime. Ask your friends questions about the mysterious events that happen to the Mariner. How many can’t they answer? 2 This is what the killing of the Albatross really means… Sailors do not offend birds and only admire their flight. Sometimes their ships work as cabbies, taking ‘free riders’ to the place of their destination: the bird flies away on its business but every time it comes back, and often it eats from people’s hands. It is considered good luck if you see seagulls or any sea bird, and bad luck to kill one. This superstition comes from the distant past and is the result of the belief that the soul of a sailor who died migrates to a seabird. Compare this view to what happens in the text, and try and imagine why the Mariner may have killed the bird though he knew what it meant. PDF

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Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

ACROSS TIME The Albatross myth AND SPACE L‘ Albatros (1858) by Charles Baudelaire

This poem by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) made the Albatross into a symbol of the poet’s flight and vision. The first three stanzas show the fall of the Albatross when sailors torment and ridicule it, making the creature appear ‘clumsy and shameful‘, ‘awkward and weak‘ (ll.6 and 9). The final stanza compares the brutalised bird with the poet and a creature of majesty now degraded. The natural state of both the albatross and the poet is to remain in the skies, above the rough world of men.

Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage, Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

Spesso, per divertirsi, i marinai

À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches, Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroits et honteux, Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches Comme des avirons traîner à côté d’eux.

L’hanno appena posato sulla tolda

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule ! Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid ! L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule, L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait !

Com’è debole e maldestro il viaggiatore alato!

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer ; Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées, Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

Il Poeta è come lui, principe delle nubi

catturano degli albatri, grandi uccelli dei mari, indolenti compagni di viaggio delle navi in lieve corsa sugli abissi amari.

e già i re dell’azzurro, maldestri e vergognosi, pietosamente accanto a sé strascinano come fossero remi le grandi ali bianche.

E comico e brutto, lui prima così bello! Chi gli mette una pipa sotto il becco, chi imita, zoppicando, lo storpio che volava!

che sta con l’uragano e ride degli arcieri; esule in terra fra gli scherni, impediscono che cammini le sue ali di gigante.

This mattered once… at the UN New York City, 1999

During the informal meetings of the United Nations delegations on Financing for Development in March and April 1999, Eduardo Galvez, Counsellor in the Permanent Mission of Chile to the United Nations, gave an impromptu statement about the ideals of the United Nations. An important image in his statement was that of the albatross in the poem by Charles Baudelaire and in the Samuel Taylor Coleridge tale in the ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; the UN, like the bird in those poems, does not fare well if it is not allowed to ‘fly high‘. He said that ‘here in the UN we should also look at the financial needs of developing countries in a different light than that of market operators and corporations. Here at the UN we should stand for ideals of human solidarity and equitable distribution of wealth at the national and international level and for the essential dignity of people. I hope we will remember these moments as our ‘finest hours’ in the promotion of the ideals of the UN, with an image of a majestic albatross high in the blue over the seas. If we fail, the image will be of ourselves with an albatross hanging around our neck‘. DISCUSS 1 Answer the questions. 1 The Mariner’s killing of the Albatross has no apparent reason in The Rime. It is not dictated by either cruelty or fun. How does Baudelaire present the destiny of the Albatross, instead? 2 Are Coleridge’s and Baudelaire’s view of the Poet similar or different?

3 The same figure, the Albatross, inspired the two authors to very different reflections. What does this tell you about the power of great ideas in literature? WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to check how participants at the UN meeting reacted to the story.

Ideas for your map: ART

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824)

LEARNING DIGITAL G eorge Gordon Bryon: the Grand Tour and the Byronic hero

IN ACTION

Profile

Web quest

Byron’s temperament was a mixture of idealism and rationalism. He was an attractive man, skilled at physical sports, and he gained great fame because of his romantic travels, his sense of the nation and the rumours of his many love affairs. A deformed foot negatively influenced his moods and isolated him, and his parents also influenced his personality; his mother was a very intense and enthusiastic woman and his father squandered all their money and then left the family. As a young man he led a rather dissolute life; he took up gambling, drinking and there were rumours concerning his bisexuality and his affair with his half-sister. He was the most popular Romantic writer of his time; this was due to the identification of his life and personality with the rebel figure of the ‘Byronic hero’, whom he created in his works. The Byronic hero exalts personal liberty and refuses all authority; his passions and emotions, whether joyful or sadly melancholy, are extreme, and he loves nature and art, which Byron found blended in Italy’s antique ruins, Renaissance marvels and glorious Italian weather. The Byronic hero appeared in Byron’s earlier works, such as Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and the Oriental Tales (The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara). In his later works, The Vision of Judgement (written in response to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey’s A Vision of Judgement) and Don Juan, he became ironic towards his own creature, the Byronic hero. Don Juan, his masterpiece, is a mock-heroic poem that revealed his love for satire; he looked at life and death with ironic indifference, and criticised society.

The Grand Tour yesterday and today

In the 18th century, young Europeans from good families had only one way to get to know the world: to leave for the Grand Tour. Artists and writers were particularly keen on this rite of passage, which was usually undertaken around the age of 21 to mark the transition from youth to adult age. Famous names include Lord Byron himself, the French Romantic writer Stendhal, and the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The itinerary varied, but the final destination was usually Italy, with the remains of its past civilisations and the impressive number of works of art on display in its buildings or in the open air. The young gentlemen – and the few ladies that were allowed to make the trip – were often accompanied by a guide, a ‘cicerone’, i.e. a cultured ‘tourist guide’ whose job was to explain the history, art and literature of Italy to their young charges.

▶ Wilhelm Tischbein, Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786-89)

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The Romantic Age – Authors and works

1 Search the web to find out more about what the Grand Tour was in the past (through diaries and letters, for example), and compare it to what young people do today to explore the world (Erasmus, gap year or other experiences). Are these forms still a rite of passage from youth to adult life?

LIFE 1788 George Byron was born in London into a noble family. He was sent first to Harrow School, and then to Cambridge.

1809 He took his seat in the House of Lords.

1810 KEY FACT He embarked on a two-year Grand Tour through the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, visiting Portugal, Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece and Turkey.

WORKS

1812–18 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

IN ACTION English in action 2 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to squander = to waste / save money

1815 He married Anne Isabella Milbanke, but she left him soon after; he drank a lot, had many debts and there were rumours concerning his sexual preferences.

1813–16 Oriental Tales p. 208

1816 KEY FACT He chose self-exile. He made friends with the Shelleys in Switzerland, and finally chose Italy as his home.

1812–18 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

1817 Manfred

1819 He joined the Carbonari conspiracy against the Austrians in Milan.

1818

Beppo

1819–20

1823 KEY FACT He volunteered to fight for the cause of Greek Independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1824 He died of a fever in Missolonghi; he was deeply missed in England and became a hero in Greece.

1821 • The Two Foscari • The Vision of Judgement

Don Juan Digital resources

In all his works, Byron’s style is neoclassical and this choice reflects his admiration for Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock ( p. 133). As for verse forms, in his early poems Byron used the heroic couplet, elaborate diction and complex syntax, even when his themes were romantic. In his later works he employed the ‘ottava rima’, which he discovered during his first visit to Italy in 1816, from the works of two Italian satirists, Luigi Pulci and Giovanni Battista Casti.

2 to gamble = to promise / bet 3 to seek = to look out / for 4 to blend = to mix / separate

MIND MAP

dissolute life

rebel – nature

George Gordon Byron

Grand Tour

The Byronic hero

good looks

neoclassical style

melancholy – solitary

◀ Statue of Lord Byron

in Villa Borghese, Rome

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What made Byron the most popular Romantic writer of his time? 2 How different are Byron’s earlier and later works? 3 Is Byron’s style romantic? 4 What works present the figure of the Byronic hero, and in which terms?

Ideas for your map: REBELLION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Oriental Tales (1813–16) Lara (1814) Byron first developed the character of the Byronic hero in the four Cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; the first and the second are related to Byron’s Grand Tour and his travels with friends in search of adventure and beauty, while the third and fourth were written respectively in Switzerland and Italy. The Oriental Tales present Gothic stories of passion, horror, guilty secrets and deaths, and the figure of the Byronic hero dominates Lara. Byron used Satan, the fallen angel in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as his model ( Digital resources). Contradictory and mysterious, the Byronic hero is a proud rebellious figure that attracts admiration but seeks solitude as he hides dark secrets in his heart. Women find him irresistible because of his good looks and melancholy attitude, while men either admire or envy and even hate him.

T32 The Byronic hero 38 Oriental Tales – Lara

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

Count Lara is the mysterious Byronic hero, full of contradictions and an isolated giant in the world of men. No one is like him.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

survives • superior • hates • evil • at risk • happy • experienced It is not known where the Byronic hero is from. He (1) when he does, his is not a (2)

smile. He has chosen for himself a destiny of suffering too much; he despises everything, and puts his life (4)

because he has (3) and when he (5)

the world, and hardly ever smiles; ,

the danger he has looked for he is both happy and sad about it. He

can do good but also (6)

in search of the extreme and looking for a (7)

world to which he feels he belongs. Now read the extract and check your answers.

What had he been? what was he, thus unknown, Who walk’d1 their world, his lineage2 only known? A hater of his kind? yet some would say, With them he could seem gay3 amidst the gay; But own’d that smile, if oft observ’d and near, Wan’d in its mirth and wither’d to a sneer4; That smile might reach his lip but pass’d not by5, None e’er could trace its laughter to his eye. […] In self-inflicted penance6 of a breast

1 walk’d: walked (l’apostrofo indica l’elisione della ‘e’) 2 lineage: lignaggio (nobili origini)

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3 gay: felice 4 Wan’d... sneer: si indeboliva nella sua gioia e appassiva in un sogghigno

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is Count Lara happy to be with other people?

5 pass’d not by: non andava oltre 6 penance: penitenza

George Gordon Byron 10

Which tenderness might once have wrung from rest7; In vigilance of grief that would compel The soul to hate for having lov’d too well. […] There was in him a vital scorn8 of all: As if the worst had fall’n which could befall9, He stood a stranger in this breathing world, An erring spirit from another hurl’d10; A thing of dark imaginings, that shap’d By choice the perils he by chance escap’d11; But ’scap’d in vain, for in their memory yet His mind would half exult and half regret. […] Too high for common selfishness, he could At times resign his own for others’ good12, But not in pity, not because he ought, But in some strange perversity of thought, That sway’d him onward13 with a secret pride To do what few or none would do beside; And this same impulse would, in tempting time, Mislead his spirit equally in crime; So much he soar’d beyond, or sunk beneath14, The men with whom he felt condemn’d to breathe, And long’d by good or ill15 to separate Himself from all who shared his mortal state. His mind abhorring this had fix’d her throne Far from the world, in regions of her own.

7 Which... rest: che la tenerezza avrebbe potuto un tempo strappare al riposo 8 scorn: disprezzo 9 fall’n… befall: fosse accaduto tutto quello che di peggio poteva accadere

ANALYSE

10 An erring... hurl’d: uno spirito errante da un altro caduto 11 shap’d... escap’d: forgiava per scelta i pericoli da cui per caso sfuggiva 12 resign... good: trascurare il proprio bene per quello altrui

2 How does he feel about the society of men? 3 Does he live a quiet or a risky life? 4 Is he happy when he escapes danger?

5 Can he be evil? Why?

6 What is his mind focused on? Why?

13 sway’d him onward: lo spingeva avanti 14 So much... beneath: così tanto si innalzava al di sopra, o si abbassava al di sotto 15 long’d... ill: bramava nel bene o nel male

INTERPRET

3 List all the contradictions concerning Lara’s personality and attitude, and choose all the words that describe him as the Byronic hero. distant

moody

self-destructive

sympathetic

ordinary

friendly

extraordinary

mysterious

4 Answer the questions. 1 There are a lot of enjambments in the text: is the description slower or faster? 2 Are the sentences short or long?

5 ‘The mind is its own place’ is Milton’s phrase to describe the proud independence of Satan, and it is paralleled by Byron’s words. Refer back to ‘Satan’s speech’ ( Digital resources), and find other similarities between the Byronic hero and Satan. DEBATE 6 Discuss the statement in groups.

All great people are doomed to be solitary figures. Group A believe that greatness drives people away from you. Group B believe that great people bring others together with their examples.

3 How would you define Byron’s style, romantic or neoclassical? PDF

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209

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

LEARNING DIGITAL P ercy Bysshe Shelley and Ode to the West Wind

Profile Percy B. Shelley had a rebellious nature and preferred to sacrifice comfort and security rather than compromise his convictions; this was first revealed when he published The Necessity of Atheism, where he challenged the existence of God. As a result, he lost his father’s financial support and had to leave Eton. His daring elopements with Harriet first and then Mary proved his radical views once more. Other traits of Shelley’s personality were his passionate search for love, his desire for social justice and hope for a better future; he was one of the most fervent supporters of the French Revolution. His many political pamphlets advocated such revolutionary ideas as political rights for Roman Catholics, autonomy for Ireland and atheism. His hope was to incite the British people to active political protest. However, the lack of positive response to his provocative invitations to change convinced him to dedicate himself to art. His works are a celebration of his restless idealism and his desire for freedom against all forms of oppression. In Ozymandias, a sonnet, the poet reminds readers that history is full of the rises and falls of empires. Ozymandias was the alternate name of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, who dramatically expanded Egypt’s empire and had several statues of himself built throughout Egypt, but in the poem all that is left of him and his power are pieces of his statue, lying in the sand. However, the reference is deliberately vague enough to maintain a universal validity beyond the confines of time and space. England in 1819 is a sonnet dedicated to the miserable situation of England in 1819 and focuses on the Peterloo massacre: 18 demonstrators in support of the reform of parliamentary representation died when the cavalry charged into the crowd. IN ACTION Look and think

Titan of today 1 Answer the questions. 1 In the Greek myth, the Titan Prometheus is eternally punished for stealing fire from the gods; an eagle eats his liver during the day and then it grows again at night. Is the statue at the Rockefeller Center similar to the figure of the myth or somehow different? 2 Does Prometheus look victorious, or defeated?

▲ The statue of the Titan Prometheus stealing the fire, Ice Rink, Rockefeller Center, New York

◀ Jacob Jordaens, Prometheus Bound (1642)

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3 Which work of art is a good representation of Prometheus as Shelley saw him?

LIFE 1792 Percy B. Shelley was born into a rich, aristocratic family.

1810 After attending Eton, he was sent to Oxford, where he studied both Platonism and William Godwin’s anarchist philosophy.

1811 KEY FACT He published The Necessity of Atheism and was expelled. He broke with his father, and eloped with 16-yearold Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley’s sisters.

1813 His first daughter was born, but he found his marriage unsatisfactory and abandoned Harriet.

1814 KEY FACT He met William Godwin, his mentor, and fell in love with his daughter, Mary Godwin; they eloped and went to France and Switzerland, where they met Byron.

1815 Shelley’s wife Harriet committed suicide.

WORKS

1816 He married Mary Godwin.

1818 The couple left for Italy; they lived in Pisa.

1817 Ozymandias

1819

The Cenci

1820

• Prometheus Unbound • To a Skylark

1820

Ode to the West Wind p. 212

1822 They went to Lerici; on a sailing trip Shelley drowned in a storm off Viareggio. His body was burnt on a pyre on the shore near Viareggio in the presence of Byron. 1821

• Adonaïs • A Defence of Poetry

In Prometheus Unbound, a closet play, i.e. a play written only to be read and not performed, Prometheus is tortured by Zeus, who tries to force the Titan to accept his tyranny, but Prometheus resists and instead forgives him. After Jupiter’s fall, Prometheus is freed and reunited with his beloved Asia. He announces the birth of a new society where everybody is vigilant that tyranny doesn’t reign again. The play reveals all of Shelley’s ideals; his rejection of tyranny, the legitimacy of rebellion, the Titanic endurance of suffering and the belief in a better world. Ode to the West Wind presents the path to regeneration that the poet undertakes when he confronts the presence of the Spirit (as spiritual renewal and ‘rebirth’ of society) in the form of the West Wind, and asks to be reunited with it. The poet searches for the union with the Spirit and is a prophet announcing to humankind a new world characterised by justice, freedom and truth. Shelley also defended the role of poetry in his essay Defence of Poetry (1821); poetry was not destined to disappear in the age of progress, but would instead guide man towards the best civilisation as ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world‘.

Style Shelley liked experimenting with traditional forms, such as the Spenserian stanza, the couplet, blank verse, the sonnet, and the ode that he transformed into a sequence of sonnets bound by terza rima, Dante’s rhyme in the Divine Comedy. He created allegories of ideas, for example the Wind that stands for the Spirit in Ode to the West Wind. The imagery is usually complex and the language emphatic and elevated. MIND MAP

rebellious nature

search for love

Percy Bysshe Shelley

social justice and freedom

Titanism

poet as a prophet

sonnet – ode – terza rima

allegories of ideas

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the table with the correct information. Shelley’s personality

Main poems

Style

Ideas for your map: REBELLION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

Ode to the West Wind (1820) As Shelley himself wrote, the inspiration for this poem came from a storm he saw in a ‘wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence‘. The poem takes up the themes of political change, revolution and the role of the poet, like his other poems written at the same time, such as Prometheus Unbound, and England in 1819. Ode to the West Wind is written as a sequence of five sonnets, each presented as a self-contained stanza, but the rhyme scheme follows Dante’s terza rima except for the final rhyming-pair couplet. The poet passionately addresses the Wind and calls it ‘Spirit‘, ‘Destroyer and Preserver‘, spreading death and giving life in the cycle of the seasons while its actions touch the three realms of nature, the Earth, the sky and the waters. After evoking the Wild West Wind and its actions, the poet asks the Wind to make him its ‘lyre‘ and the instrument of a prophecy of regeneration which is presented in vivid symbolic imagery. The poem allegorises the role of the poet as the voice of change and revolution.

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full poem • Visual analysis • Translation

T33 Oh, if I were like you, Spirit! 39 Ode to the West Wind

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

instrument • free • misses • winter • weight • natural The poet wishes that he were one of the (1) all over the world. He (2)

elements that the West Wind so easily carries

the time of his boyhood, when he felt he could be faster than

the wind; now he feels the (3)

of time that has passed, and that he is no longer as

(4)

and fierce as the wind is. He asks the wind to make him its ‘lyre’ – its

(5)

, and spread his thoughts all over the world to start a new beginning, which is as

inevitable as the spring that arrives after (6)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest1 bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant2 beneath thy power, and share

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What does the poet wish he were? Why?

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision3; I would ne’er have striven4

1 mightest: might 2 pant: che palpiti

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3 to outstrip... vision: superare la tua celeste velocità non pareva un sogno

4 striven: lottato

Percy Bysshe Shelley

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore5 need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns6 of life! I bleed7!

2 How great is the poet’s need of freedom?

A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d8 One too like thee: tameless9, and swift, and proud.

V 15 Make me thy lyre , even as the forest is: What if11 my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 10

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 20 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

3 What is autumn like?

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d12 leaves to quicken13 a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,

5 sore: estremo 6 thorns: spine 7 I bleed: sanguino 8 chain’d... bow’d: incatenato e piegato 9 tameless: indomito 10 lyre: lira, il simbolo della poesia 11 What if: Cosa importa se

ANALYSE

4 What prophecy will the poet give?

12 wither’d: appassite 13 quicken: affrettare 14 Scatter... sparks: spargi, come cenere e lapilli da un focolare inestinguibile 15 unawaken’d: dormiente 16 trumpet: tromba

INTERPRET

3 Answer the questions.

4 Discuss

1 Which words are used to describe the wind?

2 How different is the condition of the poet in the past and now? 3 Is the wind a physical reality, or a symbol, or both? Give reasons for your answer. 4 Find a few examples of metaphors and similes. How important is the figurative language to the development of the poet’s message? 5 Check the rhyme scheme; is it regular? What scheme is used?

PDF

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213

AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

John Keats (1795–1821)

LEARNING DIGITAL J ohn Keats and Ode on a Grecian Urn PPT

John Keats

IN ACTION Look and think

John Keats’ tombstone in the Protestant cemetery in Rome.

1 Answer the questions. 1 Why is there a harp on the tombstone? 2 The epitaph reads ‘Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water’. What does it mean? 3 How does the epitaph reflect Keats’ idea of time?

Profile During his brief life, Keats was capable of intense feelings, and this trait of his personality became stronger when he realised that he was going to die young. Keats reveals the complexity of his personality in his letters, which show his love for Fanny Brawne, the woman who he was in love with but never married because of his uncertain financial situation and poor health. They also show the anxiety of a brilliant young man in search of himself and his place in the world. After Keats became ill, his letters also show his concern that he would have little time to make his name eternal through his art; tuberculosis, known as ‘consumption’, led to certain death, and Keats had looked after his sick brother and seen him die. Keats rejected all systems of thought and decided to live for art and art only; it seemed to him the only human reality capable of transcending time and therefore pain and death. Greek plastic art enchanted him after he saw the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures of the Parthenon in display in the British Museum. His first poem Endymion was about the love of Endymion, a mortal shepherd, for the Goddess of the Moon. It shows the romantic attempt to find in reality an ideal love that has been imagined. His greatest poems were written in 1819, his ‘annus mirabilis’, and published between 1819 and 1820: the Great Odes (On Indolence, On a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy, and To Autumn), Lamia, The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, and The Fall of Hyperion, an uncompleted epic poem. The Eve of St Agnes and La Belle Dame sans Merci are both love poems, the former presenting idyllic love and the latter its destructive side in the figure of the femme fatale. In the Great Odes, Keats explores the contrast between eternal realities and the changeable physical world, and the perfection, immutability and eternity of art. For Keats, beauty could be physical (women, nature, statues, paintings) or spiritual (friendship, love, art); both are valuable, but only spiritual beauty is not destroyed by time and is eternal and immortal. His love for art laid the foundations for the Cult of Beauty that was central to Aestheticism in the late 19th century ( The Victorian Age). For him, imagination consists in the creation of beauty; the poet imagines an urn or a bird and he makes them real. In Ode to a Nightingale the poet wishes he could join the Nightingale, whose songs represent art, in its world of happiness with no pain or sickness. Similarly in Ode on a Grecian Urn what the urn shows is eternally young and beautiful, and therefore true. The urn stands for art, which in time grants man the temporary experience of eternity as something ‘eternally present’, although it cannot give him what he desires most:

They said of this…

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty ... O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts.” (From Keats’ letter to a friend, November 1817)

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2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Keats claim that he is sure of and cares about? 2 Tuberculosis struck Keats in the summer of 1817, and he wrote these words in November. Do they reflect his condition in your opinion?

LIFE 1795 Keats was born into a family of modest origins.

1804 His father died in an accident, and his mother remarried. The marriage was very short and she took her four children (Keats being the eldest) to live with their grandmother.

1810 His mother died of tuberculosis; he became avidly interested in books.

1815 KEY FACT He abandoned the prospect of a medical career and dedicated himself to literature.

1817 During a summer walking tour he showed the first symptoms of the fatal illness that had killed his mother.

1818 KEY FACT His brother Tom died of tuberculosis. He fell in love with Fanny Brawne, and tuberculosis struck him.

1819 Keats and Fanny got engaged and he published the Great Odes.

1820 Keats was terribly sick and was told to go to a warmer climate. He left for Naples with a friend, and from there they went to Rome.

1821 He became ill again and died in Rome.

1819 1818

WORKS

The Fall of Hyperion

Endymion

1819

Great Odes

1820

p. 216

Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems

durability (eternity) and change (time) together. Ode on Melancholy recognises that joy and desire in human life are destined to end. Therefore, melancholy inevitably accompanies them, as shown in To Autumn; the poem describes the many facets of the season.

‘Negative capability’ In one of his letters, Keats describes the most important faculty of the poet, which he calls ‘negative capability‘, i.e. the capability of the poet to be receptive and stay in a state of uncertainty. He compares Coleridge to Shakespeare: for him Coleridge was obsessed with establishing philosophical truths, while Shakespeare was capable of accepting multiple points of view and visions, without opting only for one, and therefore remaining in a ‘state of uncertainty’. In that state the artist identifies with the ‘experience’ of his/her object, and lets that experience speak through him/her.

Style Keats mastered many verse forms, such as the sonnet, the heroic couplet, the ballad and blank verse. He transformed the ode into a flexible means of expression of universal truths and concrete experiences at the same time. Sensual imagery is very important in his poems; physical beauty can only be perceived by the senses, in the smell of flowers, the charming presence of a woman, or perfect music.

▲ Joseph Severn, Portrait of John

MIND MAP

Keats (1821–23)

Greek art – the Elgin Marbles

letters – love and fame

John Keats

eternity vs time

art

beauty

physical – changeable

durability vs change

Great Odes

imagination

negative capability

sensual imagery

spiritual – eternal

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

4 What does the urn in Ode on a Grecian Urn stand for?

1 How important are Keats’ letters in understanding his personality?

5 What love is presented in La Belle Dame sans Merci?

2 What is Keats’ consolation in life?

6 What is negative capability?

3 What is the dominant theme of the Great Odes?

7 What characterises Keats’ style?

Ideas for your map: ART/IMAGINATION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T34 Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) 40 Great Odes

Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the Great Odes that Keats wrote just before his tragic death. The urn that he speaks to and describes in the ode is imaginary; the poet was thinking of the Greek artefacts in the British Museum in London, and imagining his own urn.

Structure and themes Keats presents two scenes from Ancient Greece on the urn: • the first (stanzas I–III), is a scene of lovers in the Dionysian mysteries, a ritual with dance and music, full of excitement and without inhibitions; • the second is a religious sacrifice (stanza IV). In the third (stanza V) he reconsiders what he has seen and heard and says what the urn, and therefore art, can offer to man. When the poet contemplates the urn (stanzas I–IV), he makes it come alive; he hears the music of pipes and timbrels, sees the lover trying to kiss his beloved and also the desolation of the little town during the sacrifice. The urn was made in the course of time, but the poet describes it as a creature of eternity, married to quietness and adopted by ‘silence and slow time‘. At the end of the poem (stanza V) the poet returns to the real world with the final consolation of art to himself and future generations. Here Keats lays the foundation for the Cult of Beauty, which sees beauty as perfect and eternal.

Style The ode is written in five ten-line stanzas. In the meditative Romantic ode the poet, unhappy with the real world dominated by time, escapes into the eternal present of an ideal world, here represented by the Greek scenes that decorate the urn. The poem is based on paradoxes: • the first is that the urn was made in the course of time, but it is a creature of eternity; • the second paradox is the contrast between the frozen scenes on the urn and the dynamic perception of these two scenes; • the third paradox is that the urn itself is imaginary: it only exists in the poem. ◀ Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne, and Ben Whishaw

as John Keats in Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion (2009).

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

empty • sacrifice • future • playing • pains • addresses The poet (1)

the urn and asks it about the scene of men and women caught in the

ecstasy of music and love. He invites the musicians on the urn to continue (2) ◀ A drawing

Keats rendered of the Sosibios Vase during his visit to the British Museum.

216

lover to run after his beloved; spring and love on the urn are far away from the (3) sadness of life. The poet asks the urn about the (4)

Now read the poem and check your answers.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

and

of a young cow by a group of people

who have abandoned their homes, and left the streets of their town (5) the urn as a companion and consolation for (6)

and the

generations.

. He finally praises

John Keats I Thou still unravished bride of quietness Thou foster-child4 of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst5 thus express A flow’ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme6: 5 What leaf-fringed legend7 haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady8? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth9? What mad pursuit? What struggle10 to escape? 10 What pipes and timbrels11? What wild ecstasy? 1

II Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye12 soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared13, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone14: 15 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare15; Bold16 Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve17; She cannot fade18, though thou hast not thy bliss19, 20 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! III Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed20 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu21; And, happy melodist, unwearied22, For ever piping songs for ever new; 25 More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, For ever panting and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed23, 30 A burning forehead, and a parching24 tongue.

1 Thou: arcaico per you 2 still: immobile/ancora (avverbio) 3 unravished: intatta 4 foster-child: figlia adottiva 5 canst: arcaico per can (La storia è “fiorita” per le decorazioni floreali che ornavano le urne, ma anche per la bellezza del suo linguaggio.) 6 rhyme: poetare 7 leaf-fringed legend: di nuovo si parla della decorazione dell’urna

8 In…Arcady: Tempe è una valle e l’Arcadia una regione greca montagnosa 9 maidens loth: vergini restie 10 struggle: lotta 11 pipes and timbrels: flauti e tamburelli 12 ye: arcaico per you 13 endeared: preziosi 14 ditties of no tone: canti senza toni 15 bare: spogli

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What elements evoke Ancient Greece?

2 What should musicians do?

3 What should lovers do?

4 Which two words are repeated?

5 What is life like?

16 Bold: sfrontato 17 do not grieve: non affliggerti 18 fade: svanire 19 bliss: beatitudine 20 shed: spargere 21 bid… adieu: dire addio alla primavera 22 unwearied: instancabile 23 high-sorrowful and cloyed: afflitto e soffocato 24 parching: inaridita

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Romantic poetry

IV Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st25 thou that heifer lowing26 at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest27? 35 What little town by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel28, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn29? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 40 Why thou art desolate, can e’er30 return. V O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede31 Of marble men and maidens overwrought32, With forest branches and the trodden weed33; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought34 45 As doth eternity: Cold pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt35 remain, in midst of other woe36 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all 50 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 25 Lead’st: conduci 26 heifer lowing: giovenca mugghiante 27 flanks… drest: fianchi coperti di ghirlande

28 citadel: cittadella 29 pious morn: mattino devoto 30 e’er: ever 31 brede: fregio 32 overwrought: adornata

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What do the personifications add to the reality of the urn in stanza I?

6 Can the people return to the citadel after the sacrifice?

7 Is the urn still speaking to the poet?

8 What is the final message of the urn?

33 trodden weed: erba calpestata 34 dost… thought: ci smarrisci nei pensieri 35 shalt: shall (will) 36 in midst… woe: in mezzo ad altro dolore

INTERPRET 4 Which of the following statements best describes the message of the urn in your opinion? Why?

2 Why is ‘unravished bride of quietness’ a paradox, and what does the paradox suggest?

T he urn is beauty to the poet because it makes him experience beauty as alive and present.

3 The first questions that the poet asks the urn in stanza I are longer, and also more complete than the last ones in the same stanza. What feeling does this change convey? Choose from among the following:

T he beauty of the urn is true because it has entered the world of eternity thanks to its durability.

T he beauty of the urn offers man consolation because the urn is a real but temporary experience of eternity.

excitement anxiety rising pleasure fear uncertainty anger 4 How similar/different is stanza IV to stanza I in content and tone? 5 Both men, a ‘generation’ to be wasted by ‘old age’ (l.46), and the urn exist in time: what different experiences do they have of it?

5 Which other poets and artists have given art the same importance that Keats has? Choose the one you like best and present his/her work to the class. DEBATE 6 Debate the statement in groups.

Art is the best thing in life. Group A believe that art is what makes life worth living. Group B believe that art is important but not vital for life. PDF

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THE ARTS

Eternity and time By definition, artistic works are meant to survive their creator and therefore be a representation of man’s desire to defeat mortality. The Elgin Marbles, a collection of statues taken from the Parthenon in Ancient Greece now on display at the British Museum, London, have survived thousands of years and represent the perfection of beauty in art which defies time. The Three Ages of Woman by Gustave Klimt, instead, focuses on the reality of time passing inexorably by presenting three women, from infancy to old age.

Elgin Marbles from the East Pediment of the Parthenon (5th century BCE), British Museum, London

The sculptures that represented the birth of Athena are lost. The posture of the surviving ones varies in order to accommodate the slope of the pediment that originally framed them.

The Three Ages of Woman (1905) by Gustave Klimt THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. Elgin Marbles 1 What figures can you see from right to left? 2 What does the male figure look like? 3 Look at the anatomy of the bodies and the clothing covering them. How accurate are they? 4 What impression do the statues make on you? 2 Web quest Search the web for the poem that Keats wrote about his visit to the British Museum, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817). What feelings prevail in the poem? 3 Answer the questions. The Three Ages of Woman 1 Which two figures are close, and which is isolated? 2 How is the mother-child pair represented? 3 Is the representation of the woman deformed by old age realistic? Focus on the details of her hands, hair and belly. 4 The mother-child pair is often cut out of the painting to represent motherhood, and the old woman is absent. What do you think this choice may represent?

The three women symbolically represent the three different stages of life: infancy, adult life and old age, and the passing of time.

4 Web quest Look for other works that may represent the contrast of eternity and time, and prepare a slide show with your emotional response (verbal or non-verbal) to each work.

Ideas for your map: ART

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219

AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel

Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823)

LEARNING DIGITAL A nn Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho PDF

The Mysteries of Udolpho: full plot

Profile Radcliffe is now regarded as the creator of the artistic style of the Gothic novel, and her popularity as a writer in her lifetime was enormous. She became the most highly-paid professional writer of the 1790s: an author was usually paid £10 for a manuscript, but she sold her copyright for The Mysteries of Udolpho for £500, and The Italian for £800. Even though Gothic fiction was condemned as the ‘trash of the circulating libraries’, her work gained widespread recognition. She also contributed to the theoretical definition of the Gothic novel; her essay On the Supernatural in Poetry (1826) helped define the Gothic; she suggested that Shakespeare was the major proponent of the ‘Sublime’ as described by Edmund Burke in his 1757 treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful ( p. 175). She was the most emulated and plagiarised author of the period. Her descriptions of nature inspired several Romantic painters, and the plots of her novels were copied for illustrated chapbooks and plays on the London stage. She was one of the first novelists to use descriptions of landscape, weather and the effects of light as mirrors for the emotions of her characters. Characterisation was dominated by intensity of feelings rather than psychological depth, and one of her most brilliant realisations was the villain of The Italian, Schedoni, a monk of sinister disposition who became the prototype of all the dark, mysterious figures of the Romantic tradition, such as the Byronic Hero ( p. 178). Her prolonged scenes of suspense were much appreciated, despite the anachronisms and lack of historical realism in the narrative.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe developed the conventions of the psychological terror typical of the Gothic novel: • supernatural events, which are always given a rational explanation; • the ecstasy and fears of her characters’ vivid imagination; • the association of evil villain and persecuted heroine. The novel also presents extended descriptions of exotic landscapes in the Pyrenees and Apennines, and of Venice.

THE PLOT The novel is set in 1584 in southern France and northern Italy. After her mother’s death, Emily St. Aubert and her father, who share a love of nature, begin a tour from their home in Gascony, France, to the Pyrenees and then to the Mediterranean coast. She meets Valancourt, and they fall in love. Emily’s father dies and the Italian nobleman Montoni, the husband of Emily’s aunt and guardian, Madame Cheron, imprisons Emily in his castle, Udolpho, to force her to marry his friend, Count Morano. He changes his mind when he discovers that Count Morano is not as rich as he first thought. Madame Cheron dies and Emily escapes from the castle and is reunited with Valancourt. 220

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1764 She was born in London as Ann Ward.

1772 Her family moved to Bath to run a porcelain shop there.

1787 She married William Radcliffe, a journalist, who encouraged her literary interests.

1794 She travelled to Holland and Germany.

1791–97 KEY FACT She published her Gothic novels, and then she dedicated herself to poetry until her death.

1794

WORKS

The Mysteries of Udolpho p. 220

1797

The Italian

IN ACTION

Themes

English in action

Radcliffe perfected the Gothic conventions of the setting; the dark places that she described became symbolic of the disturbed psychological state of her characters. In the end, all the apparently supernatural events are revealed to have an explanation; the characters have to return to the world of logic and rationality. The only emotions which are preserved as right and memorable are those connected to contact with nature, which is usually sublime. Awe and a ‘melancholic charm’ dominate Emily’s spirit as she immerses herself in the magnificent silence of nature.

1 Match each word (1–5) to the correct definition (a–e). 1 to emulate 2 to plagiarise 3 chapbook 4 anachronism 5 awe a a mix of respect, fear and wonder b to copy an author’s work pretending you wrote it c to imitate an author’s work d a type of printed street literature containing tales and ballads e a fact or object in a work that is not coherent with the time it is part of

MIND MAP

Gothic novel

nature – sublime

Style Radcliffe carefully builds up suspense by delaying action and information and leaving space for the characters’ sensations, moods and feelings. Once the tension reaches its climax, it is usually followed by deflation; the supernatural or horrible event that the character was expecting is revealed to be either natural or ordinary. ▶ Henryk Pillati,

Robbers (1860)

Ann Radcliffe

The Mysteries of Udolpho

supernatural events

psychological terror

rational explanation

suspense

deflation

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What was Radcliffe’s reputation as a writer? 2 What innovations did she bring to the Gothic novel? 3 What themes are present in The Mysteries of Udolpho?

Ideas for your map: MYSTERY/SUBLIME

p. 247

221

AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T35 A love of nature 41 The Mysteries of Udolpho

Emily describes her solitary wandering in the most spectacular and fearful mountain regions. She announces that her communion with nature will make her a poet.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

intensity • see • path • appreciates The narrator describes what Emily (1) (2)

most when she is in nature, and the

of her emotions. Her favourite (3)

is towards a fishing house in a

little valley with a river and filled with trees; from there she can (4)

the mountain and the

slopes and then the lowlands of Gascony in the distance.

▲ Caspar David Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rugen (1818)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Emily like doing?

2 Is she alone in nature? 3 When does she goes walking?

1 glen: valle (stretta e lunga) 2 rivulet: ruscelletto 3 glade: radura

Now read the extract and check your answers.

It was one of Emily’s earliest pleasures to ramble among the scenes of nature; nor was it in the soft and glowing landscape that she most delighted; she loved more the wild woodwalks, that skirted the mountain; and still more the mountain’s stupendous recesses, where the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her heart, and lifted her thoughts to the GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. In scenes like these she would often 5 linger alone, wrapt in a melancholy charm, till the last gleam of day faded from the west; till the lonely sound of a sheep-bell, or the distant bark of a watch-dog, were all that broke on the stillness of the evening. Then, the gloom of the woods; the trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze; the bat, flitting on the twilight; the cottage-lights, now seen, and now lost – were circumstances that awakened her mind into effort, and led to enthusiasm 10 and poetry. Her favourite walk was to a little fishing-house, belonging to St. Aubert, in a woody glen1, on the margin of a rivulet2 that descended from the Pyrenees, and, after foaming among their rocks, wound its silent way beneath the shades it reflected. Above the woods, that screened this glen, rose the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, which often burst boldly on the eye through the 15 glades below. Sometimes the shattered face of a rock only was seen, crowned with wild shrubs; or a shepherd’s cabin seated on a cliff, overshadowed by dark cypress, or waving ash. Emerging from the deep recesses of the woods, the glade3 opened to the distant landscape, where the rich pastures and vine-covered slopes of Gascony gradually declined to the plains; and there, on the winding shores of the Garonne, groves, and hamlets, and villas – their outlines softened by 20 distance, melted from the eye into one rich harmonious tint. (From Chapter 1)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

INTERPRET 4 Is the description of the landscape factual or emotional?

1 Why does Emily prefer this kind of natural landscape? 2 Why is the description of the natural landscape sublime? 3 What are Emily’s feelings as she confronts sublime nature?

WEB QUEST 5 Search the web to find paintings or pictures of nature that inspire in you the same intense feelings that Emily experiences here. PDF

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The Romantic Age – Authors and works

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Ann Radcliffe

T36 A Gothic world is born 42 The Mysteries of Udolpho

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Emily is led by Barnardine, one of the guards, inside the castle, to what appears to be a tomb hiding a corpse. The Gothic interiors and the obscurity make Emily tremble with fear.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

grave • prepared • fears • castle • torch of Udolpho. He is carrying a (2)

Barnardine leads Emily inside the (1)

to light the way, and as she stops near the iron gates she can see an open (3)

She believes that she will find her aunt’s corpse in it, but it is empty. Emily asks Barnadine who it was (4)

for, but he won’t answer. Emily (5)

that she may be killed.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Is there enough light to see well?

2 Is this definitely a grave?

3 Where does she arrive at?

As he said this, he moved on with the light, and Emily, fearing to provoke him by further delay, reluctantly followed. From the steps, they proceeded through a passage, adjoining the vaults, the walls of which were dropping with unwholesome dews, and the vapours, that crept along the ground, made the torch burn so dimly, that Emily expected every moment to see it extinguished, and Barnardine could scarcely find his way. As they advanced, these 5 vapours thickened, and Barnardine, believing the torch was expiring, stopped for a moment to trim it. As he then rested against a pair of iron gates, that opened from the passage, Emily saw, by uncertain flashes of light, the vaults beyond, and, near her, heaps of earth, that seemed to surround an open grave. Such an object, in such a scene, would, at any time, have disturbed her; but now she was shocked by an instantaneous presentiment, that this was 10 the grave of her unfortunate aunt, and that the treacherous Barnardine was leading herself to destruction. The obscure and terrible place, to which he had conducted her, seemed to justify the thought; it was a place suited for murder, a receptacle for the dead, where a deed of horror might be committed, and no vestige appear to proclaim it. Emily was so overwhelmed with terror, that, for a moment, she was unable to determine what conduct 15 to pursue. […] Pale with horror and anxiety, she now waited till Barnardine had trimmed the torch, and, as her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking. She faintly repeated the question, but the man, shaking the torch, passed on; and she followed, trembling, to a second flight of steps, having ascended which, a door 20 delivered them into the first court of the castle.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What aspects of the castle are presented as Gothic? 2 What characterises Emily’s feelings as she walks and reaches the grave? 3 How does the narrator build up the suspense?

INTERPRET 4 Work creative Imagine you are a film director who has to film this scene; what would you tell the actress playing the role of Emily to help her make her performance convincing? What scenic effects would you use?

4 As typical of her narration, Radcliffe deflates the suspense. How? PDF

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223

AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel LEARNING DIGITAL

Mary Shelley (1797–1851)

M ary Shelley and Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus PPT

Mary Shelley

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Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus: full plot

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From Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus DT27 The mystery of life unveiled (from Chapter 4)

Profile The death of her mother, whom Mary Shelley never knew, left a deep mark on the young woman, but she was deeply influenced by her mother’s intellect and example through her writings. Mary never received a formal education as her stepmother did not consider it necessary, but the girl read extensively in her father’s library and was immersed in a rich cultural environment; both William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge were welcome guests in her father’s house. The period she spent in Scotland isolated her from the father she loved, but nurtured her literary imagination. She wrote Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, at the age of 18; she was fighting to find her voice as a writer at a time when women writers were few. Mary became a strong-willed girl who defied social conventions by eloping with a married man and having a child out of wedlock. The unmarried couple faced hostility and financial problems, and after her husband died the demanding reality of being widowed at 26 and losing three children never discouraged her. She dedicated herself to publishing his works and chose to make a living as an independent writer in London.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)

IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to defy = sfidare / diffidare 2 to nurture = coltivare / alimentare 3 to elope = avere una relazione / sposarsi segretamente 4 wedlock = matrimonio / contratto 5 nemesis = aiutante / nemesi 6 to reject = rifiutare / accettare 224

In 1816, the Shelleys were at Villa Diodati with George Byron and John William Polidori, an English writer and physician. After Byron launched a competition for the best ghost story, Mary proposed the rough idea for Frankenstein, claiming that she had had a dream about the creature. On the same occasion, Polidori is credited for imagining the short story The Vampyre (published in 1819), transforming the vampire from a character in folklore into the disturbingly sensual aristocrat who finds his victims in high society. The competition thus gave modern form to an existing figure, the vampire, and gave new life to a totally new one, the monster or creature modelled on the myths (Prometheus, Satan, the Byronic hero and Coleridge’s strange Ancient Mariner and his journey to the South Pole) that had fuelled Mary’s imagination. The novel was completed for publication in 1818; it was published anonymously and it was thought that P.B. Shelley had written it since he wrote its introduction. The book was immediately a great success; it explores various themes, which take it much beyond the conventions of the Gothic novel it was identified with.

Models Many influences came together in the novel: the Gothic tradition of novels ( p. 182) in choosing dark settings and extreme emotions, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge ( p. 200) for the figure of Captain Walton and his journey to the Pole, Mary’s husband’s work, Prometheus unbound, in its turn inspired by the Byronic hero and Milton’s Satan, for the figure of both Doctor Frankenstein and the monster.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1797 KEY FACT Mary was the daughter of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the political philosopher William Godwin; her mother died 11 days after her birth, and her father remarried Jane Clairmont.

1812 Mary was sent to Scotland for two years; she met P.B. Shelley, who was already married at the time.

1814 Mary and P.B. Shelley eloped and went on a tour of the Continent, together with Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont.

1815 Her first baby was born premature and did not survive.

1816 KEY FACT After Shelley’s first wife’s suicide, the couple married; they met with George Byron and John William Polidori at Villa Diodati, near Geneva, Switzerland, where she started writing her masterpiece, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

WORKS

1818 Mary had three more children, but only the last one survived.

1822 The Shelleys moved to Lerici; Mary’s husband drowned in a storm near Viareggio.

1818 Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus p. 224

1823 She returned to England; she kept writing novels all her life.

1826 The Last Man

Shelley gave origin to a modern myth, Frankenstein, who, thanks to mysterious studies in chemistry and the power of electricity, puts together and animates a new creature. Doctor Frankenstein’s warning on his deathbed places her work in the tradition of the novel with a purpose. She teaches a clear moral: no man should ever overcome natural barriers.

THE PLOT Captain Robert Walton, a British explorer, wants to reach the North Pole, but his boat is stuck in the ice. He finds Doctor Victor Frankenstein dying, rescues him and listens to his tale. After his mother’s death, Victor had gone to university in Ingolstadt to study chemistry and natural philosophy; then, after four years of intense work and solitude, he animated a revolting monster but was horrified by his creation and rejected it. In revenge it then killed Victor’s younger brother. Justine, a servant in Victor’s home, was accused of the murder and was found guilty and punished by death. In the Alps, Frankenstein met his creation, who wanted a female companion; Victor made it, but then refused to animate it, and in revenge the monster killed first Clerval, Victor’s friend, and then Elizabeth, Victor’s wife, on their wedding night. Victor chased the monster to the North until Walton found him on the ice. Victor dies, the monster disappears over the ice and Walton gives up his voyage to the North Pole. ▲ Colin Clive as Doctor Frankenstein and Boris Karloff as the monster in the 1931 film version of the novel.

Structure and characters In the novel, Shelley chooses to use multiple narrators, Captain Walton, Doctor Frankenstein and the monster itself. This enabled the author to present different views of the theme of man as a rebel and the challenging of human limits: the cost of rebellion in terms of the pain and suffering inflicted on himself and others. • Captain Walton, who writes letters to his sister, opens and ends the novel. He wants to be the first to reach the North Pole and would willingly lead all his crew to their deaths to do so. After listening to Victor’s tale, he gives up. He accepts his limits. • Doctor Frankenstein, who is aboard Walton’s ship, tells the captain the story of his life from his birth to the moment he was found on the ice. He gives up life, love and health to create a new being, and pays with his life. • The monster itself, who meets Frankenstein on a glacier in the Alps, explains to the doctor what happened after it ran away from the doctor’s laboratory until their meeting. It has no human limits and disappears over the ice at the end of the novel. 225

AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel

Themes

Across time and space

In Frankenstein, the protagonist, science student Victor Frankenstein, defies all limits of human knowledge and finally solves the mystery of life. He creates a ‘monster’ that becomes his Doppelgänger, the ghostly replica of a real person who could also be seen as an alter ego of Doctor Frankenstein. The monster, or ‘wretch’, is given no name in the book and is a giant creature stronger than any human being; it becomes the doctor’s nemesis as it is abandoned and rejected by its own ‘father’ and only desires revenge. Its emotions are extreme; as the monster says, it can either love or hate, and is destined to be lonely and solitary. These traits make it similar to the Byronic hero ( p. 206). It can survive in extreme conditions and its adaptability is the sign of its being a creature of nature, a natural man inspired by the myth of the noble savage, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s derivation According to this view, it is because the monster is rejected that it becomes cruel and revengeful: it is ill treatment that corrupts its fundamentally good nature and makes it an outcast.

Who saw the Doppelgänger first?

A Gothic and a sci-fi novel

IN ACTION

The ‘Doppelgänger’ is a double of a character, in the form of a shadow, reflection, portrait, or twin; a person is simultaneously conscious of his internal self (himself), and of an external one (the other). Seeing oneself from the outside usually causes discomfort and even fear and horror; for Sigmund Freud, the unconscious itself is a second consciousness which has become terrifying because it corresponds to something repressed that has returned.

Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel, such as the horror of the creature, the details of its creation, the intensity of the characters’ feelings, not to mention the sublime locations of the setting of the Alps and of the North Pole. The novel is also an example of modern science fiction, as Doctor Frankenstein’s experiment with life raises questions concerning the purpose and limits of science. In the end the doctor sees his own dedication to science as folly, and the creature as a horrible monster.

MIND MAP

mother’s intellect and example

Mary Shelley

young woman writer

Gothic – sci-fi novel

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

modern myth – the doctor and the monster

extreme emotions

the natural man

multiple narrators

search for knowledge – alter ego/Doppelgänger

2 Answer the questions. 1 Which of the forms the Doppelgänger takes is most frightening in your opinion? 2 Freud considers the Doppelgänger as something not coming from the conscious part but from the unconscious. It is repressed but then it surfaces and causes terror. Do you think this description applies to Frankenstein’s monster, too? 226

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What was Mary Shelley’s position as a woman writer in her age? 2 What kind of personality did she have? 3 Which influences can be traced in Mary Shelley’s work? 4 Which genres are combined in Frankenstein? 5 What themes can be found in the novel? 6 Why is Frankenstein the first sci-fi novel?

Ideas for your map: REBELLION/INDEPENDENCE/THE DOUBLE

p. 247

Mary Shelley

T37 The miserable wretch 43 Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

After four years of study and little contact with people, Doctor Frankenstein completes his experiment; he creates a giant being and gives it life. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

beautiful • nightmare • monster • horrified • life Frankenstein narrates how the monster came to (1)

on a dark November night; he was

shocked to see his creature, which he had hoped would be (2) (3)

, for what it was: a

of horrible appearance. At this sight the doctor ran away and fell asleep; he had a

(4)

where Elizabeth, the woman he loved, was transformed into a corpse.

(5)

, he woke up to see the monster standing before him.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Robert De Niro as the ‘monster’ in the 1994 film adaptation of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What pronoun does the doctor use for the creature?

2 How long has the doctor been working on his project?

3 What did Doctor Frankenstein do in his dream? 4 Whose corpse does Elizabeth change into?

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes1, and my candle was nearly burnt out2, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the 5 creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his 10 teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets3 in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion4 and straight black lips. The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate 15 body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded5 to the tumult I had 20 before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they 25 became livid with the hue6 of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud7 enveloped her form, and I saw the 1 pattered… panes: picchiettava contro i vetri 2 burnt out: consumata

3 sockets: orbite 4 shrivelled complexion: pelle raggrinzita

5 lassitude succeeded: una stanchezza estrema vinse 6 hue: tinta 7 shroud: sudario funebre

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel

5 What is the monster trying to do?

grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew8 covered my forehead, my teeth chattered9, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, 30 I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws10 opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and 35 rushed downstairs. (From Chapter 5) 8 dew: sudore

9 my teeth chattered: battevo i denti

ANALYSE

10 jaws: mascelle

DEBATE 2 Is the episode Gothic?

3 Write details from the extract for each of the following points.

5 Debate the statement in groups.

3 Are the doctor’s moods and feelings in accordance with the general setting of the scene?

Science has and should have no limits.

4 Answer the questions.

4 What elements of the macabre are present in Elizabeth’s appearance?

Group B believe that science should be limited by ethical and moral principles.

1 What does Doctor Frankenstein call the monster?

5 What kind of narrator is present in this extract, and who is he?

• Time • Atmosphere • Monster’s appearance

PDF

Group A believe that scientific research and experimentation should have no limits.

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This Dark Endeavour (2014) by Kenneth Oppel Kenneth Oppel is a successful, award-winning Canadian writer of children and YA fiction. His most famous work is the Silverwing book series, which has sold over a million copies worldwide, and was adapted as an animated TV series in 2003. This Dark Endeavor is part of The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein and it’s the first of his two novels about the famous Romantic character.

A prequel to Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic This Dark Endeavor is about young Victor Frankenstein and his determination to help his twin brother Konrad after he’s been diagnosed with an incurable illness. With the help of his cousin Elizabeth and best friend Henry, Victor is ready to do whatever it takes and use the secret books of the Dark Library to save Konrad’s life.

“

I ’ve been fascinated by the Frankenstein myth since I saw an old film about the famous monster, so I couldn’t wait to give Kenneth Oppel’s book a go. The Gothic feel of it was amazing and I really appreciated the way the author develops the character of young Victor. The best thing is that reading this prequel to Mary Shelley’s story eventually encouraged me to pick up the original novel, which I think is one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read.

“

ou see, when medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. – Y Polidori.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video, listen to Jacob’s review of the book and answer the questions.

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia 1 Do you agree science should never break the boundaries set by nature? presentation to illustrate the novel and the 2 Can you think of a modern discovery or invention which seems to go against the laws of nature? links with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or 3 Would you like medicine to be able to give human beings immortality? the Modern Prometheus. 228

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

ACROSS TIME Science fiction or sci-fi AND SPACE Sci-fi, science fiction, began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its reflections on the nature of scientific research as either legitimate a priori or rather the result of human ambition with terrible consequences. The debate which began with Frankenstein went on with various positions, which reflected the mainstream of a specific era, such as the American liberalism of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series.

The beginnings of sci-fi are to be found throughout the 19th century, in such works as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), whose protagonist in the end regrets the time he dedicated to science, Jules Verne’s Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1864) and H.G. Well’s The War of the Worlds (1898). Verne’s stories predict a series of scientific devices (television, the submarine, space travel), and glorify material progress; they derive their materialist character from the Positivism1 of Auguste Comte (1798–1857) and the impact of the technological developments of the 19th century. Wells’ work, on the other hand, is characterised by social criticism and speculation about human nature and a fear of Darwinism2; the Martians that attack the Earth and threaten mankind are a critique of British Imperialism.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Is the view of science positive or negative in the 19th century works? 2 Who wrote sci-fi novels dedicated to the critique of his own times?

Science fiction actually came into being when Hugo Gernsbach began the publication of Amazing Stories, the first sci-fi magazine, in the US in 1926; in the following years, the genre gained in popularity and other magazines appeared. In the typical Golden Age sci-fi story of the 1950s, science was to lead us in glorious progress, with new worlds and alien inhabitants. At the centre of many of the Golden Age works – such as in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series (1951–1992) – was empire. In its elevation of science and its belief in progress, the Golden Age was an expression of the dominant post-war American liberalism. 1 Positivism stated that knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. 2 Darwinism, after Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of the Species (1859), stated that all species of organisms arise and develop through natural selection.

WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to find film adaptations of these novels in the era of digital special effects. Discuss the pros and cons of their use in giving life to imaginary worlds.

3 When and where was the best period of sci-fi, and what attitude prevailed as regards science?

Ideas for your map: SCIENCE

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FILMS FOR THOUGHT

The monster and the author The night Byron, Polidori and 17-year-old Mary Shelley made a competition for the best ‘ghost story’ she came up with an idea that has become not just a novel, but a modern myth; not the doctor, but the outcast, the wretch, the nameless monster.

Frankenstein (1931) The film features Boris Karloff’s legendary and frightening performance as the monster. His role in the film established him as a horror icon and for many as ‘the monster’ by definition.

Young Frankenstein (1974) Mel Brooks’ film is a hilarious parody of the iconic film adaptation of 1931. Young Frankenstein, a descendant of the ´mad scientist‘, wants to replicate the experiment that created the monster, but not everything goes as it should. First of all his assistant, Igor, takes a brain to be put into the monster whose label reads ‘Do not use this brain! ABNORMAL‘…

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1994) In Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation, the monster is truly grotesque but also thoughtful, and his words reveal a torment similar to the one experienced by Caliban, the monster of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. When his father dies, he cries in despair.

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Mary Shelley (2018) In the film adaptation by Haifaa Al-Mansour, the Saudi Arabian filmmaker of Mary Shelley, Mary is portrayed as someone intent on writing her own destiny; she is a determined woman who, according to the director, projected onto the monster the desire for love and life of a woman who did not accept the conventions that her time imposed on her, and defied them.

Poor Things (2024) The film is a black comedy-fantasy film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos; a young woman, Bella, is brought back to life by her guardian, the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. She breaks free from his protection and runs away with Duncan Wedderburn, a cunning but rather immoral lawyer, and becomes a free, independent woman.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Search the web for some clips of the films. Here are some suggestions: Frankenstein Doctor Frankenstein and his assistant Igor animate the monster with the force of lightning while three observers watch the scene in fear. The monster moves its hand while the doctor shouts ‘It’s alive’. Young Frankenstein Before a stupefied audience the monster walks with difficulty and heavily at Frankenstein’s orders, and then they tap dance “putting on The Ritz” together. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Frankenstein uses his machinery to infuse life into the monster, and despairs when he believes he has failed. He cries ‘It’s alive!’ with excitement when he sees its hand moving inside the machinery. Mary Shelley The film trailer shows that Mary was fascinated by electricity, one of the latest discoveries of her time, and her determination to

publish as her own a novel that, as her sister says, ‘chilled me to the bone’. Poor Things Watch the trailer where Bella evolves from a clumsy childish being dependent on her ‘father’ to an independent energetic woman freely choosing where to go and who to be with. 2 Answer the questions. 1 Which version of the night of the monster’s creation is most frightening in your opinion? 2 Do you like Mel Brooks’ parody of the horror genre? Why?/Why not? 3 In the film Mary Shelley the author fights for what she desires with determination. Do you think this corresponds to the characterisation of Frankenstein, of the monster, or both? Which of the two is her true Doppelgänger? 4 Is the film Poor Things tragic or comic from what you see from the trailer?

Ideas for your map: THE DOUBLE/SUBLIME

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231

AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel LEARNING DIGITAL E dgar Allan Poe and Tales of Mystery and Imagination PPT

Edgar Allan Poe

PDF

• Poe’s everywhere • Rationality and irrationality

PDF

DT28 The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Profile Poe established the archetype of the Romantic literary artist in the USA but with the decadent traits of a poète maudit. His view that the ultimate aim of art is art itself, independent of social or political contexts, and his attitude as a bohemian influenced the birth of the Symbolism of Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé in France. Poe’s interest in the perfection of style and construction in art qualifies him as one of the pioneers of the ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ movement in 19th-century European literature. Poe was a great psychologist, capable of presenting characters obsessed with the macabre and the horrible in perfectly organised tales. His short stories focus on the impressions registered by events on the characters’ minds, rather than objective reality, with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. They fall into two categories: the tales of ratiocination and the Gothic/horror tales. With his tales of ratiocination, he is considered the father of the detective story, with the fictional detective Auguste Dupin, the analysis of clues and deductive reasoning (a properly rational instrument) used to understand the aberrations of criminal behaviour. Most of the time, the crimes are strange and inexplicable, and the behaviour of the criminals is often abnormal, close to madness and irrationality. These elements are common in the tales of ratiocination and the tales of horror. The Gothic tales can be seen as tales of horror and mystery tales moving between rationality and irrationality. Poe often brings the dead literally back to life; in Ligelia, the loving memory of a heartbroken husband resuscitates his dead wife, Ligelia.

The theory of suspense In Poe’s short stories, conflict is centred on a clearly defined issue, and then it moves on ‘with the precision and rigid consequences of a mathematical problem‘, with dramatic events unexpectedly disrupting the ‘natural’ order of things. As he states in The Philosophy of Composition, suspense drives the reader on until the final terrible ending. It comes from the psychological horrors of deeply disturbed minds and from the narrative developing like a riddle.

The narrator The first-person narrator, most often unreliable, and the reader with him, lose themselves in a mysterious narrative that escapes both definition and solution. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator assures the reader that he is mentally sane but gradually reveals that he is paranoid; he claims that he can hear a dead man’s heart beating and leads the reader into the complex labyrinth of his confused emotions. The same unreliable first-person narrator appears in The Black Cat, a story of obsession ending with the supernatural appearance of a diabolical cat that the narrator blames for his ruin.

The setting To increase the sense of mystery, Poe often talks of enclosed spaces – a building, a room, a ship, even a coffin – from which no escape is possible, and hallucinations – mainly nightmares, coming not from the world outside, but from the inner selves of abnormal characters. 232

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1809 Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachussetts (USA), but lost his parents when he was two years old. He was taken in by the Allan family.

1826 He went to the University of Virginia; he was an excellent student.

1827 He was expelled because he had turned to gambling to pay for the costs that the funds from the Allans did not cover. He joined the army and then went to the military academy of West Point.

1829 KEY FACT He was expelled from West Point because he deliberately didn’t do the training exercises. He broke ties with the Allans and dedicated himself completely to writing.

1836 He married his cousin Virginia, who was only 13.

1849 His health became progressively worse until his death.

1838

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

1833–49

WORKS

1847 Virginia died from tuberculosis at the age of 24. He started drinking heavily.

Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque

1839 (first edition) Tales of Mystery and Imagination including The Black Cat p. 234

1845

The Raven

1846

The Philosophy of Composition

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/expression (1–4) to the correct definition (a–d). 1

a decadent

a a socially unconventional person who looks for originality in the arts against all conventions

a poète maudit

b a person with low moral standards who looks for pleasure in all forms

a bohemian

c the general knowledge about criminal psychology or crime scene investigation applied to the specifics of a case

deductive method

d a poet who rejects society and that society excludes, and so is an outcast

MIND MAP

Romantic literary artist

Edgar Allan Poe

art for itself

tales of ratiocination

perfection of style

detective story

Gothic/horror tales

Auguste Dupin clues deductive reasoning

psychological horror and mystery suspense enclosed spaces hallucinations

aberrations of criminal behaviour

◀ Engraving by Gustave Doré for The Raven

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How influential was Poe’s figure from the literary point of view? 2 What categories of short stories did Poe write? 3 What characterises his Gothic/horror tales? 4 How does he create suspense in his stories? 5 Which elements increase the sense of mystery?

Ideas for your map: MYSTERY/EVIL

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The Black Cat (1843)

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

Pluto: the god of the Underworld in Roman mythology.

In The Black Cat, one of his most popular short stories, the narrator kills his beloved cat, Pluto, and then finds another one, very similar to Pluto. But, was it really another one?

THE PLOT The anonymous narrator is waiting for his own execution; he wants to tell his listeners what has brought him to this point, although he claims that he won’t be believed. After taking up drinking, he transformed from a gentle animal lover and a good husband into a diabolical cat-torturer. One night he cut out one of the eyes of Pluto, his wonderful black cat that adored him. The narrator started to detest Pluto, and one day he hanged it. That night, his house burnt down; the image of a cat with a rope around its neck seemed to have been engraved on a wall. The narrator replaced the lost animal with another cat that he found on the street; it looked like Pluto, with the only difference of a white mark on its chest which slowly took the form of the gallows. One day, the narrator almost fell down the stairs going to the cellar because of the cat. In a rage he grabbed an axe to kill it; his wife tried to stop him and he killed her. He carefully hid her corpse in the wall, and the cat disappeared. A few days later, the police showed up at the house to investigate his wife’s disappearance; after searching everywhere, the narrator and the police went down to the cellar. Confident that his crime wouldn’t be discovered, the narrator hit the wall behind which he had hidden his wife’s corpse. A loud, inhuman sound was heard; the police broke down the wall and found the woman’s corpse in there, with the one-eyed black cat sitting on her head.

Themes and interpretations The story has multiple interpretations which depend on how the narrator and the cat(s) are considered. The title itself, ‘The’ Black Cat, leaves the reader in doubt as to whether there are two very similar cats, or only one which comes back from the dead to take its revenge.

• The spirit of PERVERSENESS

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Who is a psychopath? In modern psychology the emotional and lifestyle traits of a psychopath are: • lack of remorse or guilt • insensitivity and lack of empathy • failure to accept responsibility for one’s own acts • impulsivity • lack of deep emotional attachments • dangerous risk-taking Search the web to find examples in films or TV series of figures with these characteristics, and see if they can be treated.

The narrator hangs Pluto in ‘cool blood’, only motivated by what he calls ‘the spirit of PERVERSENESS‘, the unmotivated and therefore irrational desire to do what is evil because it is evil. The cat (re)appearing becomes the symbol of the narrator’s devastated remorse; occasionally a sense of guilt torments him.

• Insanity The story can be interpreted as a case study of a psychopath or insane individual, whose words cannot be put into doubt as he is the only narrator.

• The cat as the devil Another interpretation presents the cat as the devil tempting man to become a cruel murderer. The choice to omit first names except for Pluto – the characters are the narrator, the wife, the police – brings the case study of a psychopath to the level of a moral fable.

Narrator and style The story is told by an unreliable first-person narrator; his emotional outbursts, his monstrous cruelty and his self-confidence build up the image of a profoundly disturbed individual. He wants to convince his listeners of the reasonableness of his attitude, even of his worst crimes. The irony is that he employs the traditional language of reason in carefully organised narration to justify and defend the actions of unreason. MIND MAP

one/two cats 234

spirit of perverseness

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

The Black Cat

remorse – guilt

insanity – psychopath

cat as the devil

first-person unreliable narrator

Edgar Allan Poe CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence to its correct half. 1

The narrator kills his beloved cat, Pluto, and then

a to become a cruel murderer.

‘The spirit of PERVERSENESS’ is the desire to do

b what is evil because it is evil.

The cat may have come back to take its revenge and

c insane individual.

The narrator can be seen as a psychopath or

d torment the narrator with a sense of guilt.

The cat is the devil tempting man

e first-person narrator.

The story is told by an unreliable

f finds another one.

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T38 The final horror 44 The Black Cat

The narrator’s personality has dramatically changed; he keeps on drinking, and starts hating both the cat and his wife, whom he treats cruelly. One day he goes into the cellar of his house with his wife. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

corpse • the police • one-eyed • relieved • kill • sound • protect The narrator goes into the cellar with his wife; he is about to fall down the stairs, and believing it is the it with his axe. The wife tries to (2)

cat’s fault he wants to (1)

the cat,

and he strikes her with his axe instead. The narrator takes down the bricks in the cellar wall, puts the (3) so (4)

inside the wall, then relays the bricks and cleans up. The cat vanishes; the narrator is that he sleeps well all night. After four days, (5)

arrive to search

the house, in particular the cellar, but find nothing. As the police are walking out of the cellar, the narrator strikes the wall. A terrible (6)

comes from behind it. The police take down the

wall. Inside they find the woman’s rotting body, with the (7)

cat sitting on her head.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Does the narrator kill his wife by accident, or on purpose?

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand1, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong2 exasperated me to madness. Uplifting3 an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath4, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed5 my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as 5 I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded6 by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan7. This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. […] I determined to wall it up in the cellar – as the monks 10 of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims. For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted8. […] By means of a crowbar9 I easily dislodged10 the bricks, and 1 household errand: faccenda domestica 2 throwing me headlong: facendomi cadere in avanti 3 Uplifting: sollevando 4 wrath: ira

5 hitherto stayed: fino a quel momento fermato 6 Goaded: provocato 7 groan: gemito 8 Qui il narratore considera diversi modi di occultare il

cadavere della moglie, lucido e calcolatore, e poi decide di seppellirla nel muro. 9 crowbar: palanchino 10 dislodged: rimossi

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Gothic novel

2 Who does he blame for his wife’s murder?

3 Is he troubled by his crime?

4 What kind of climax is this?

having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped11 it in that position, while, with little trouble, I relaid the whole structure as it originally stood. […] The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was 15 picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself, ‘Here at least, then, my labour12 has not been in vain.’ My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness13; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty14 animal had 20 been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself15 in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful16 sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom17. It did not make its appearance during the night – and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly 25 and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul! The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a free man. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises18 for ever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. […] Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. 30 Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment19, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook20 or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not21 in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers22 in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom23, and roamed easily 35 to and fro24. The police were thoroughly satisfied, and prepared to depart. The glee25 at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness26. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, ‘I delight to have allayed27 your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By-the-by, gentlemen, this – this 40 is a very well-constructed house.’ (In the rabid28 desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered29 at all.) ‘I may say an excellently well-constructed house. These walls – are you going, gentlemen? – these walls are solidly put together’; and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado30, I rapped heavily31, with a cane32 which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. 45 But may God shield and deliver me33 from the fangs on the Arch-Fiend34! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence35, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! – by a cry, at first muffled36 and broken, like the sobbing37 of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream38, half of horror and half

11 propped: appoggiai 12 labour: sforzo 13 wretchedness: degradazione 14 crafty: astuto 15 forbore… itself: si astenne dal presentarsi (non si fece vedere) 16 blissful: beato 17 occasioned in my bosom: generò nel mio petto 18 fled the premises: fuggì dalla mia casa 19 inscrutability… concealment: imperscrutabilità del mio nascondiglio

236

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

20 nook: nicchia 21 quivered not: non tremai 22 slumbers: dorme pesantemente 23 bosom: petto 24 roamed… fro: vagabondavo a mio agio avanti ed indietro 25 glee: soddisfazione 26 guiltlessness: innocenza 27 allayed: calmato 28 rabid: folle, rabbioso (come di cane colpito dalla rabbia) 29 uttered: dissi 30 frenzy of bravado: la pura frenesia della spavalderia

31 rapped heavily: picchiettai pesantemente 32 cane: bastone da passeggio 33 shield… me: proteggermi e liberarmi 34 fangs… Arch-Fiend: zanne del demonio 35 sunk into silence: si zittirono 36 muffled: soffocato (Il miagolio del gatto emerge dalla parete richiamando l’attenzione dei presenti.) 37 sobbing: singhiozzante 38 scream: urlo

Edgar Allan Poe

5 How did the cat get into the wall?

of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the 50 damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation. Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning39, I staggered40 to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe41. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling42 at the wall. It fell bodily43. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore44, stood erect before the eyes of the 55 spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb! 39 Swooning: sul punto di svenire 40 staggered: indietreggiai vacillando 41 awe: terrore 42 toiling: lavorando strenuamente 43 bodily: fisicamente (per intero) 44 clotted with gore: ricoperto di sangue rappreso

ANALYSE 3 How does the narrator feel after he has murdered his wife? Choose from among the following: full of remorse paralysed by horror and fear cold and deliberate destroyed by pain indifferent to the deed 4 Identify the epithets that the narrator uses to call the cat. How different are his feelings now from the ones he used to feel for the first cat? 5 There are many superstitions about black cats: they bring bad luck, they are witches in disguise trapping men with their magic craft, they are the devil himself clothed in red fire. Look for evidence in the text, and then choose the correct option. Everything about the cat, its scream, its appearance and its art, a

transforms it into a poor victim of the man’s extreme anger.

akes it the personification of all superstitions, and a creature of m pure evil.

i s nothing but the revelation of the narrator’s final and complete insanity.

6 The climax comes in an atmosphere of horror typical of Poe’s stories. Which macabre details can you identify, and for which character(s)? INTERPRET 7 Divide into two groups, and answer the questions: a Is the narrator’s explanation for the presence of the cat in the wall plausible? If not, how did the cat get inside the wall? b Is the second cat the same as the first? If not, why are they so similar? c Is the narrator lying to the reader? If so, when? And why is he lying? Now compare your answers. Are they similar/different? PDF

Your text explained

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237

AUTHORS AND WORKS Novel of Manners

Jane Austen (1775–1817)

LEARNING DIGITAL J ane Austen and Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility DT29 How miserable I am!

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IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

1 Match each word/expression (1–6) to the correct definition (a–f). 1

eloping

arranged marriage

dowry

sense

sensibility

landed gentry

Courtship and marriages as they used to be

In Austen’s time, balls were fundamental for women to meet their future husbands; gentlemen would invite ladies to dance to court them but only after the lady’s parents had given their consent to the gentleman’s interest. 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is there anything similar in today’s world? 2 Compare the reality of marriage in Austen’s and Shakespeare’s works. Which author appreciates it most in your opinion? 3 When do you think marriage disappeared as a necessary step in a man and woman’s relationship in Western literature?

238

4 5

Themes • Marriage Marriage is presented as a contract, in the context of the patriarchal system of inheritance of the time, which privileged first-born sons. The ‘rank’ (i.e. social standing) of the bridegroom, and the dowry of the bride were the most important factors when families arranged marriages. Complex legal rules prevented women from inheriting from their parents and hardly any profession was open to women. For them, a marriage was almost the only way to gain economic independence and respectability because an unmarried woman was socially inferior to a married one. For a woman, eloping was a scandal that ruined her reputation and also that of her family.

• Happy ending The happy ending of Austen’s novels is the appropriate self-realisation of fully conscious individuals who have discovered their true selves. They have overcome prejudiced opinions and social conventions in the experience of reciprocal knowledge motivated by love.

• Social class The relationship between the rich and well-bred and those of a lower social standing is at the heart of conflict. In Persuasion, the author explores the various aspects of class rigidity and social mobility; Anne Elliot, the protagonist, is witty and kind, and understands and respects the importance of making a good marriage.

Setting and style Jane Austen’s novels are usually set in the countryside, mostly in the south of England, in the stately houses of the landed gentry. This choice allowed the author to focus on the interaction of a limited group of characters, closely investigated from a psychological point of view. Common sense and realism are key aspects of her style, which is also characterised by lively dialogues and irony. Dialogue is fundamental to understanding the characters’ personalities, while irony is how the external narrator expresses her critical views concerning both characters and conventions.

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1775 Jane Austen was born in Steventon, a small village in north-east Hampshire, into a family of very modest means.

1785 Jane and her sister Cassandra were sent to a boarding school in Reading.

1786 KEY FACT They were withdrawn from the school as the fees were too high for the family; after that, they were educated at home.

1801 Her father George retired and the family settled in Bath.

WORKS

1802 Jane accepted a marriage proposal from Bigg-Wither, the heir to considerable estates in the area, but changed her mind the day after accepting it.

1805 Jane’s father died and the family found themselves in a precarious financial situation.

1806 The family moved to Southampton.

1810–17 KEY FACT 1809 She revised her three They moved early novels and again to composed another Chawtown, three. a small country village a few miles from Austen’s birthplace. 1811 1814 Sense and Sensibility

Mansfield Park

1813

1815

Pride and Prejudice p. 239

MIND MAP

Emma

1816 She started having health problems and died in Winchester one year later.

1818 (posthumously published) • Northanger Abbey • Persuasion

Jane Austen taste for drama

irony

excessive sensibility vs sense (reason)

dialogue

realism

marriage

novel of manners

happy ending

social class and mobility

landed gentry

Jane Austen and her own time

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

Jane Austen was born in a complex historical moment, just after

the beginning of the (1)

and

during the war between Britain and (2)

Britain lived in a state of tension similar to that of a totalitarian state, where intellectuals were prosecuted and letters

FIRST

2 45 LISTEN to a passage about the relationship between Jane Austen and her own time, seen in a new unorthodox way. Complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. You will hear the recording twice.

(3)

. Some writers opted for

(4)

far from contemporary reality,

while Austen wrote about her own time. Like writers in totalitarian states in (5)

Europe, she criticised

the situation but not in an (6)

way.

Pride and Prejudice (1813) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From Pride and Prejudice DT30 The difficult art of conversation (Chapter 18)

Characters • The Bennets: a middle-class family of modest income; they live at Longbourn House in Hertfordshire. Mr and Mrs Bennet have five daughters Jane, Elizabeth (Lizzy), Mary, Catherine (Kitty) and Lydia, from the eldest to the youngest. Jane is the most beautiful, Lizzy is well read and quick-witted, Mary is studious and pedantic. Kitty and Lydia are both gossipy and immature. Mr Collins, a pedantic reverend, is Mr Bennet’s cousin and future heir.

Ideas for your map: MARRIAGE/SOCIAL CLASS

p. 247

239

AUTHORS AND WORKS Novel of Manners

• The Lucases: neighbours and friends of the Bennets, Sir William, Lady Lucas, with their daughters Charlotte and Maria. Charlotte is 27, not particularly attractive and Lizzy’s best friend. • The Darcys: a noble family. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy gentleman, is the master of Pemberley, a wonderful country estate, and the nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He is intelligent and honest, but also arrogant and snobbish. Georgiana Darcy is Darcy’s younger sister, extremely attractive and shy. • Charles Bingley is Darcy’s wealthy best friend; he has an easy-going nature and unlike Darcy does not care about class differences. • George Wickham is a handsome and fortune-hunting army officer.

THE PLOT Mr Bingley, accompanied by his friend, Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, the nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, arrives at Longbourne. Mr Bingley falls in love with Jane Bennet, whom he meets at a ball. Mr Darcy persuades his friend that she is not seriously interested in him and Bingley departs for London. Elizabeth Bennet receives a proposal of marriage from Mr Collins, her pompous and foolish cousin, which she refuses. Although he considers the Bennet family inferior in rank and education, Mr Darcy starts being attracted to Elizabeth as he admires her intelligence. He proposes to her, but Elizabeth is convinced that he is responsible for Jane’s unhappiness, and has also behaved unfairly to George Wickham, an admirer of her sister Lydia. Therefore, she refuses Darcy’s marriage proposal. He writes her a long letter and she realises she may have been wrong in her opinion about him. Elizabeth visits her friend Charlotte Lucas, who has had a marriage of convenience with Mr Collins. While on a journey, she visits Darcy’s estate, and learns that Wickham has eloped with her sister Lydia causing a scandal. Mr Darcy gives Wickham a large sum of money in secret to convince him to marry Lydia. Lydia returns to her family as a married woman.

Mr Bingley returns to Longbourne and proposes to Jane, who accepts him. Unexpectedly, Lady de Bourgh visits Elizabeth and orders her to forget her nephew, who, she thinks, should marry her daughter. Elizabeth sends her away and when Darcy proposes to her again, she accepts and they get married.

▲ Scene from the 2005 film version of the novel

Themes • Society and marriage Social status is one of the main concerns of most characters; they firmly respect social conventions and class as the basis for a healthy society. However, Elizabeth, the heroine of the novel, does not passively accept social conventions, her marriage is the expression of deep, lasting love, and Darcy feels the same. Conflict in the novel is centred on love and marriage: Elizabeth Bennet, a smart but stubborn woman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a class-conscious man but capable of sincere feelings, represent the ideal reality of love and marriage. Jane Bennet and Mr Bingley represent the naivety of lovers guided by their passions, but unable to use their own judgement in seeking a life together. Lydia Bennet represents the excesses of sentimentalism that Austen also criticised in Sense and Sensibility. As for Mr and Mrs Bennet, their marriage can hardly be considered an example to follow; he lives apart from his own family while she torments him with her concerns about marrying their five daughters.

• Pride and prejudice The characters are often blinded by pride and they make mistakes in their impulsive behaviour and judgement of people and situations. They are also dominated by their prejudices. Darcy is so proud of his rank that he is blind to the nobility of heart that may be present in those of lower origin than his, as happens with Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth’s pride is intellectual; once she has formed her view of a person, she never changes it. Both learn how wrong they are, which proves that a proper moral upbringing may overcome both pride and prejudice. Darcy abandons his snobbery, while Elizabeth learns not to trust her own judgment as inevitably right. 240

The Romantic Age – Authors and works

MIND MAP

landed gentry

social status and conventions

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

love and marriage

pride and prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy

Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley

Lydia Bennet and George Wickham

Mr and Mrs Bennet

deep lasting love

naïve love

excess of sentimentalism

isolation and irresponsibility

snobbish – intellectual

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the text with the given words. families • old • sentimentalism • negative • prejudices • model • landed • naïve

Pride and Prejudice In Pride and Prejudice, Austen depicts the world of the (1)

gentry of early 19th-century England. Several (2)

from different social classes are presented in their interactions, in particular the Bennets through Elizabeth and Darcy, the heroine and the hero. for all unions as they overcome their pride and (4)

Their marriage becomes the (3)

freely; they also defy conventions to do so. The most (5) thinks about (6)

and choose each other

example of a union is Lydia Bennet and George Wickham’s; she only

and he only cares about money. The other unions are somehow defective; Jane Bennet and Mr Bingley love , while Mr and Mrs Bennet are an (8)

each other but are too (7)

couple who no longer care about each other.

T39 Mr and Mrs Bennet, an old couple 46 Pride and Prejudice

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Chapter 1 introduces the novel through a conversation between Mr and Mrs Bennet, who talk about a new neighbour.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

duty • irritated • visit • unmarried • asks • ignore • happiness Mrs Bennet (1) (3)

her husband to (2)

their new neighbour, Mr Bingley, a rich

man who has recently rented Netherfield Park, but at first he tries to (4)

her. She informs him that their neighbours are all going to visit Mr Bingley, and Mr Bennet replies that his wife and daughters could go on their own. She is (5) (6)

by his answers, and insists that it is his

as a father to think of his daughters’ futures and (7)

and to visit their

new neighbour. ▲ Another scene from the 2005 film adaptation of the novel

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Ideas for your map: LOVE/PRIDE

p. 247

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UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What does Mrs Bennet know about the new neighbour, Mr Bingley?

2 What does Mr Bennet want to know about the new neighbour? Why?

3 What interest do the Bennets and the Lucases have in common?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune1 must be in want of2 a wife. However little known3 the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful4 property of some one or other of 5 their daughters. “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let5 at last?” Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. “But it is,” returned she, “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.” 10 Mr. Bennet made no answer. “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife, impatiently. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.” This was invitation enough. “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise-and- 15 four6 to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas7, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.” “What is his name?” 20 “Bingley.” “Is he married or single?” “Oh, single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune – four or five thousand8 a year. What a fine thing for our girls!” “How so? How can it affect9 them?” “My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome10? You must know that 25 I am thinking of his marrying one of them.” “Is that his design11 in settling here?” “Design? nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely12 that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore13 you must visit him as soon as he comes.” “I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, 30 which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.” “My dear, you flatter14 me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to 35 give over15 thinking of her own beauty.” “In such cases a woman has not often much beauty to think of.” “But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.” “It is more than I engage for16, I assure you.” “But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment17 it would be for one of 40 them! Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account18; for in 1 in… fortune: di una solida fortuna (patrimonio) 2 be… of: bisognoso di una moglie 3 However… known: per quanto poco conosciuti 4 rightful: legittima 5 let: affittato 6 chaise-and-four: carrozza a quattro cavalli 7 Michaelmas: la festa di San

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The Romantic Age – Authors and works

Michele il 29 settembre, la data tradizionale per l’inizio di un periodo di affitto 8 thousand: thousands of pounds (Un reddito considerevolmente alto, di solito associato ad una casa a Londra, una in campagna oppure addirittura una tenuta.) 9 affect: influenzare 10 tiresome: noioso

11 design: intento 12 likely: probabile 13 therefore: perciò 14 flatter: adulate 15 give over: rinunciare 16 engage for: possa promettere 17 establishment: sistemazione (un buon matrimonio) 18 merely… account: soltanto per quel motivo

Jane Austen

4 What details of Mr and Mrs Bennet’s family life do you learn from their conversation?

general, you know, they visit no new-comers. Indeed, you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not19. ” “You are over scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty20 consent to his marrying whichever 45 he chuses21 of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for22 my little Lizzy.” “I desire you will do no such thing23. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others24; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured25 as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.” “They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he. “They are all silly and 50 ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness26 than her sisters.” “Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me27. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.” “You mistake me28, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” 55 “Ah! you do not know what I suffer!” “But I hope you will get over it29, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.” “It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.” “Depend upon it30, my dear, that when there are twenty I will visit them all.” 60 Mr. Bennet was so odd31 a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve32, and caprice33, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding34, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace35 65 was visiting and news. (Abridged from Chapter 1)

19 La signora Bennet si riferisce alle convenzioni sociali del tempo che stabilivano che soltanto i mariti potessero recarsi in visita presso nuovi vicini ai fini di stabilire relazioni amichevoli. 20 hearty: sincero 21 chuses: chooses 22 throw… for: mettere una buona parola 23 I… thing: Desidero che non lo facciate affatto

24 La signora Bennet descrive tre delle sue figlie a partire dallo stereotipo del tempo; una giovane donna doveva essere bella, di belle maniere, e saper intrattenere le persone perché istruita nell’arte della conversazione e del canto. 25 good humoured: affabile 26 quickness: intelligenza 27 vexing me: contrariarmi 28 mistake me: mi fraintende

29 get… it: si riprenderà 30 Depend… it: Può star tranquilla che 31 odd: insolito 32 reserve: reticenza 33 caprice: volubilità capricciosa 34 mean understanding: scarsa intelligenza 35 solace: consolazione

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

6 What narrative technique is most used in the text?

1 What opinion do Mr and Mrs Bennet have of their daughters?

4 What kind of narrator is present in the extract?

2 Who speaks more and who asks questions more, Mr Bennet or Mrs Bennet?

a internal

external

b omniscient

non-omniscient

3 What are the personalities of Mr and Mrs Bennet like?

c intrusive

non-intrusive

4 Does the narrator’s comment in the last paragraph (ll.62–66) confirm or contradict what you have learnt about the couple from their dialogue? 5 The initial sentence (ll.1–2) is ironic because young men do not want to marry at all costs, and they do not belong to potential brides. Which other examples of irony can you find in the extract?

INTERPRET 5 Do you think that Mr and Mrs Bennet represent marriage at its best, or at its worst? Why? PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

243

StoryTelling You should have been less cautious, Jane! • This letter to Jane Austen might have been written by Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice, some time after her marriage with Darcy Fitzwilliam.

Dear Jane, It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that your novel, Pride and Prejudice, has made me one of the first examples of feminism in literature. I only partly agree with this idea, and I’ll try to explain why. It is true that in Regency England marriage was the focus for girls. It was so for my sisters and for me, too. It was a question of survival, alas! Women couldn’t own or inherit land at the time, so after our father’s death we Bennet girls would have faced a miserable destiny without the safety of a wealthy husband. You were certainly luckier than we were, Jane! You had the luxury of your family’s financial support. Your father came from a rich family of merchants and your generous brother provided you with a home and a yearly income after your father’s death. Not to mention the money you made with your books, which your brother, a banker, invested for you!

▶ Anne Hathaway

as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane (2007)

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The Romantic Age

STEP 1

Do you know that in the future you will have your portrait on England’s ten-pound notes? I am grateful to you for making me marry Darcy, the man I love. But you could have gone further with me. You made me smart, sensible, proud, independent. I loved reading, I was somehow an educated girl… Why confine me to dependence on a man like you did with my sisters? Don’t you think you have been too cautious with me, Jane? When you wrote Pride and Prejudice you were certainly familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas. In her A vindication of the Rights of Woman she demands equal rights for men and women, as women are neither weaker nor less intelligent than men.

WATCHING

• In 2013 an unusual adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was released: an American web series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. In the form of a vlog (video blog) the story is the chronicle of Lizzie Bennet’s life, a 24-year-old graduate living with her two sisters, Lydia and Jane. The action of the plot takes place on different social media, like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Find the series and watch some of the episodes.

STEP 2

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

• Getting inspiration from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, reproduce one of the extracts presented in the previous pages from Pride and Prejudice in the form of a video or a podcast.

Why didn’t you allow me to develop my potential, to become a more autonomous woman, freed from the expectations and pressures that Regency society imposed upon me? But perhaps this would have been too radical for the period. Your novel wouldn’t have become the smash hit it is, and I wouldn’t be one of the most popular characters in English literature! All in all, I am happy with my destiny. I’ve been luckier than most girls in my position. I have married the man I chose and though I am dependent upon Darcy to provide for me, I have some power in our relationship and our marriage seems to be on equal terms. Not bad for a late 19th-century proud country girl who could have ended as a spinster in some remote monastery! Yours sincerely Elizabeth Bennet Fitzwilliam

AI ACTIVITY Ask an AI software to be Jane Austen and ask her to answer Elizabeth Bennet’s letter. Remember to ask your AI assistant to talk in the first person. Prepare to report the AI’s answer to the class and compare it with your classmates’.

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4 THE ROMANTIC AGE

KEY WORDS THINKING SKILLS

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share 1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Agree on a short definition for each. 2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words for each point, or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class, in groups or with a classmate. Describe 1 The American Revolution brought about the birth of the United States of America. 2 Romanticism was a European movement involving many arts. 3 Graveyard and primitive forms of poetry were rediscovered in Pre-Romanticism. 4 Nature is seen in many ways in Romanticism. 5 There are usually considered to be two generations of Romantic poets. 6 The historical novel presents fictional characters and events from the past. 7 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has many interpretations. 8 The Byronic hero is an idealistic but contradictory figure. 9 Mary Shelley created the modern myth of Frankenstein. Explain 1 The Industrial revolution changed the landscape of Britain. 2 The French Revolution caused mixed reactions in the UK. 3 The noble savage and the child are somehow similar. 4 William Blake uses symbols to present complex ideas. 5 John Keats’ poems anticipated the cult of beauty of the late 19th century. Justify 1 The French Revolution was a milestone in European history. 2 For William Wordsworth emotions are essential in order to know nature and man. 3 Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley features a prophecy of regeneration. 4 Ann Radcliffe combined the supernatural and rationality in her novels. Compare 1 The traditional and literary ballads have points in common but there are also differences. 2 The Gothic novel and the novel of manners have opposite characteristics. Assess 1 The Industrial Revolution caused more social injustice than any previous changes in means of production. 2 The taste for the primitive and spontaneous poetry totally supplanted the taste for refined verse poets. 3 Rebelliousness is a trait common to all English Romantic writers.

STORYTELLING

WRITING

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IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

THE ROMANTIC AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

nature / sustainability / sublime

revolution / rebellion / pride

the good savage / the child / innocence

emotions / love / art

independence / women’s rights

exploitation / science

supernatural / imagination

mystery / evil / folly

marriage / social class

the double

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme nature / sustainability. Step 1 Read this short introduction to Romantic landscape painting: Landscape and seascape painting was the first to show the sublime. The sublime was totally different from two other styles of landscape painting in Romantic art: the pastoral, with peaceful scenes of harvests and gardens, or the picturesque, with the charm of discovering the landscape in its natural state. While the pastoral and the picturesque show that mankind lives in peace in nature and can dominate it, the sublime, with boundless and majestic visions of nature, causes awe and terror. Step 2 Focus on the idea of nature, and discuss what it represents for you and how people are expected to relate to it in today’s world. Step 3 Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view. 2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about nature / sustainability. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English The beauty and the power of nature

Law Directive 2008/99/EC of the European Parliament to protect the environment

Physics Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction

Latin Bucolics – The locus amoenus (Virgilio, 42–30 BCE) De rerum natura (Lucretius, first century BCE) The principle of atomism

▲ John Constable, The Hay Wain (1821)

Philosophy Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement, Immanuel Kant, 1790) Nature is not a mechanical reality but it has a clear purpose.

▲ William Turner, Vesuvius in Eruption (1819)

Italian La Ginestra (Giacomo Leopardi, 1845) The power of nature is opposed to the fragility of man.

Spanish Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1879) Nature as a symbol for life and love. German Hymen an die Nacht (Odes to the Night, Novalis, 1800) Man’s creativity is best developed in nature. 247

THE VICTORIAN AGE (1837–1901) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Poverty vs wealth

THINKING ROUTINE Which is which? 1 Look at the pictures. What impact do you think poverty may have on people’s health? 2 Answer the questions. Poverty and Wealth 1 Who can afford to buy more than the bare necessities for survival? 2 Who wears the most elegant and expensive clothes? 3 What expression does the old woman dressed in a green shawl have as she looks at the wealthy family? 4 What aspects of Victorian society does the painting highlight? Misery and luxury 5 Is the beggar alone in the street? 6 How does the man look? Do you think he has a house? 7 Is anybody paying any attention to the man sitting in front of Caviar House? 8 What do you think may make people indifferent to a person’s misery? 3 Match each kind of poverty (1–4) with its definition (a–d). 1

absolute poverty

relative poverty

situational poverty

generational poverty

a a person is able to meet basic needs, in whole or in part, but they earn just enough to do that. They have no extra resources for education or entertainment, even in its simplest forms b a person is unable to meet basic needs – food, clean water, and safe housing – because they do not have enough money to do so (less than $2.15 per day) c a person is not able to meet basic needs or barely manages to do so, and this situation lasts for two or more generations, in a cycle that repeats itself because this person has few or hardly any chances of improving their status d a person is not able to meet basic needs or barely manages to do so because of a difficult circumstance – a divorce, death, and illness – which severely impacts their financial means

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▲ William Powell Frith, Poverty and Wealth (1888) Frith was one of the most popular artists of his era. The painting divides the rich (on the left) from the poor (on the right) to represent the great division between the rich and the poor characteristic of Victorian society. The elegant mother is about to board her small carriage while her three children wait for her with their governesses. The servant is carrying a toy, a large model Noah’s ark, which has been bought for the children in the toyshop. On the right, a group of people, mostly children, are queuing to buy the remains of fish at a cheaper price at the end of the day, while the woman in black, a widow in mourning clothes, looks away from the food she can’t afford to buy for her child, who is also wearing black.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas maps Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping into texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts by authors In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ Misery and luxury A man begs in front of Caviar House, a luxurious seafood bar located in the very centre of historic London, just off Piccadilly. Piccadilly Circus offers a variety of cinemas, theatres, shops and restaurants, including famous traditional English pubs. Tourists and Londoners visit the area to see the iconic square and go to theatres and cinemas. However, even in the very heart of one of the most glamorous areas of the city located near Buckingham Palace, beggars are to be found in the streets.

Ideas for your map: POVERTY

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HISTORY AND SOCIETY LEARNING DIGITAL • Queen Victoria’s reign • The settlement of the West • The American Civil War and the abolition of slavery The Victorian Age: History and Society

PPT

• History narrated: An age of contradictions ( Digital resources, Study Booster) • The scramble for Africa • Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians

PDF

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1-4) to its definition (a–d). 1 2 3 4

free trade protectionism natural selection Creationism

a imports from other countries are restricted by the government b goods and services can be bought and sold across international borders with little or no government prohibition c the belief that God created the world as it is narrated in the Bible d the survival of the forms of life most able to adapt to the environment

Key Facts An age of contradictions The UK 1846 FREE TRADE, CAPITALISM AND THE WORKING CLASSES In 1846, the policy of free trade, or laissez faire – the opposite of protectionism – was adopted. It was an important factor in the growth of both the economy and the population; 6,000 miles of railway were opened, making the postal service faster and stimulating not only commerce, but also travel and leisure opportunities. With the Factory System, industries were concentrated around the great coalfields and became organised on capitalistic lines. It was a period of great hardship for the working classes, with no access to education, no civic rights and conditions of extreme poverty and misery. The population was concentrated in urban slums, characterised by unhealthy houses with insufficient water supplies and poor sanitation though some effort was made to improve urban life, mainly by providing basic services: water, gas lighting, paved roads and buildings of public interest such as police stations, libraries, theatres and museums. Conditions for children were terrible by modern standards. Working hours were long and they could be ‘sold’ as apprentices. Prostitution was also common. The nursing profession greatly improved after Florence Nightingale, ‘The Lady with the Lamp’, witnessed the tragic conditions of wounded soldiers in the Crimean War (1853-56), the only war fought on European soil.

1834-1875 AN AGE OF REFORMS The Poor Law of 1834 left the problems of misery and poverty unsolved as the workhouses, in theory charitable institutions for those in need, were in practice prisons where the poor had to accept unpleasant jobs for food and shelter. Most Prime Ministers, whether Conservatives (Peel, Disraeli), or Liberals (Palmerston, Gladstone), advocated a policy of reforms concerning working conditions, education and civil rights, in order to prevent any insurrections. Limitations of working hours were first established in 1833 with the Factory Act, and then with the Ten Hours’ Act (no more than ten hours a day for all

The USA 1853-1865

1861-65

IN ACTION Key words 2 Match each word/ expression (1-4) to its definition (a-d). 1 2 3 4

the Frontier Manifest Destiny slavery amendment

a an article added to the American Constitution b the American mission to occupy the West c open land of unlimited opportunity for ambitious people d when a human being is considered as property of another by law 250

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER AND IMMIGRATION

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

The expansion to the west of the newly-born United States of America began with the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803 and ended in 1853 with the territories below New Mexico; the nation went from coast to coast. Between around 1815 and 1865 a major wave of immigration occurred from Northern and Western Europe, mainly from Ireland, whose citizens escaped the potato famine, and from Germany. Immigrants continuously advanced the ‘Frontier’, the virtual border for occupied lands, towards the Pacific. In 1848, the discovery of gold in California gave further impetus to colonisation during the Gold Rush. The expansionist drive was justified by some with the theory of Manifest Destiny. However, the expansion started the destruction of the way of life of the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains.

Slavery was a matter of fervent debate but above all an economic institution. The South was a rural society, and agriculture there depended on the activity of slaves. The North had big urban centres and thriving industries and there the workers were free people. In 1861, seven Southern slave and agricultural states (subsequently to become eleven) declared their secession

The Victorian Age – Key Facts

1876 VICTORIA, QUEEN AND EMPRESS workers). The 1891 Elementary Education Act granted free elementary education, and a second Education Act raised the school leaving age to 12 in 1899. Three Reforms Bills extended the right to vote. The First Reform Bill in 1832 abolished the rotten boroughs, with the right to vote granted to any man owning a household worth at least £10. With the Second Reform Bill in 1867 town workers could vote, and finally in 1884 the Third established universal male franchise. In 1875, the Trade Union Act made the workers’ organisations of self-protection legal and established the right to strike.

In 1858, India came under the direct rule of the British government and the British Raj was established, which was to last until 1947. Queen Victoria (1814-1901) was coronated as Empress of India in 1876; she ruled the largest empire in the world. Industrialisation was growing; there were advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge and general optimism and faith in progress. New Imperialism was fuelled by the need to find, with force, if necessary, new trading partners (to import raw materials from and export products to). In 1870 only 10% of the African continent was controlled by foreign powers. The occupation of Egypt and the acquisition of Congo were the first moves in a hurried scramble for African territory. By 1914, the situation was dramatically different, with almost 90% of Africa under the domination of a European country. However, there were poverty and social unrest at home and massive exploitation of native populations in the colonies, and growing uncertainty and uneasiness caused by new ideas in philosophy and science. The principles of Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism – usefulness, happiness and avoidance of pain – dominated social thinking, but they also brought indifference to human and cultural values. In On the Origin of Species (1859), written after his voyage to the South Seas as a naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-82) advocated for man’s evolution as the result of natural selection (Evolutionism). He borrowed the ideas of the ‘survival of the fittest’ from sociologist Herbert Spencer and of the ‘struggle for existence’ from economist Thomas Malthus.

1880 IRELAND AND HOME RULE In 1801, the Act of Union had joined Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but most of the Irish, as Catholics, did not have political rights. In the 1840s, the Hungry Forties, recurrent famines hit Ireland, still an agricultural country; this led to mass starvation and widespread emigration to both Great Britain and the USA Charles S. Parnell (1846-91) demanded Home Rule (an independent government) for Ireland in 1880; it was twice rejected in Parliament and was finally achieved only after the end of World War I.

1865-77 THE RECONSTRUCTION from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America after President Abraham Lincoln proposed banning slavery throughout the USA. The war ended in 1865 with the defeat of the Confederacy (the Southern states) by the Union (the Northern states); the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in 1865.

Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, the new President Andrew Johnson inaugurated the period of Reconstruction (1867-77). The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were made in an effort to establish equality for black Americans; the Southern states responded with the black codes, laws that required African Americans to sign yearly labour contracts and re-established plantation discipline. In 1877, the Jim Crow Laws introduced segregation, i.e. the principle of ‘equal but separate’, in the Southern states. White supremacist organisations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, committed terrorist acts. In the North the iron and steel industries expanded. Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the Industrial Revolution in the North-East (1810-50) to the settlement of the West (185090). Oil fields were opened in Texas, Illinois, Kansas, California and Oklahoma; electricity changed social life enormously, providing lighting for the cities and power for industries. Americans saw their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, electric trolley cars and gasoline-powered automobiles at the end of the century, when they also experienced the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation’s rapidly growing cities.

Ideas for your map: EMPIRE/REFORMS/SEGREGATION/PROGRESS

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THE ARTS

The world expositions, the showcase of a nation’s identity From 1851 to the middle of the 20th century, during the ‘age of progress‘, the Expos were the most important event of cultural exchange. The earlier Expos were influenced by colonial ambition and by the progress of the Industrial Revolution. Material progress based on technological innovation was at the heart of the exhibitions, a reflection of Positivism. After the First and the Second World Wars, technology started being seen instead as potentially destructive. Recent Expositions, such as the 2021 Dubai Expo and the 2025 Tokyo Expo, have shown interest and concern for sustainability.

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis

Crystal Palace (1851) by Sir Joseph Paxton (architect) – London

The Victorian Age

The Eiffel Tower (1889) by Gustave Eiffel (engineer) – Paris

Ideas for your map: PROGRESS

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL L iterature in the Victorian Age PPT

The Victorian Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

An age of engagement and battle

Literature that reflects society Art for society, or for itself? Most Victorian literature was dominated by the belief that literature and art fulfilled an ethical role: to guide individuals to the ideals of decorum and modesty typical of the Victorian middle class and to incite them to amend social evils. The double lives of Victorians, one moral and socially acceptable, the other immoral and hidden from society, contradicted this principle. Towards the end of the age, art was no longer expected to convey typical mentality and conventional morality; it became ‘Art for Art’s Sake‘. Victorian literature can be divided into two stages: • The early Victorian period (1837–70): writers identified with their own era even when they disapproved of its transgressions. They considered art a useful tool for the improvement of society and the moral life of its citizens. • The later Victorian period (from 1871 onwards): a sense of dissatisfaction and rebellion prevailed, and some writers chose to explore art and its pleasures for their own sake. Each writer identified with one of the many literary movements of the age, which were in some cases influenced by similar experiences in Europe: Realism, the faithful reproduction of outer reality; Naturalism, which advocated total objectivity and a scientific approach to literature; Aestheticism, the doctrine of ‘Art for Art’s Sake‘, and Decadentism, which stated that art was superior to nature and that the finest beauty was that of dying and decaying things.

Aestheticism and Decadentism in Europe and the UK

▲ London in the 19th century

254

Dissatisfaction with the Victorian compromise and aesthetics characterised Aestheticism and Decadentism, two movements that partly coincided in the works of Théophile Gautier, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé in mid-19th century France. In Aestheticism, art had nothing to do with morality; its purpose was pleasure, the pursuit of beauty and the refinement of taste for the sake of taste itself. Between 1866 and 1876, Les Parnassiens, a group of French poets, opposed the sentimentalism and subjectivism of Romantic poetry, advocated absolute impersonality in artistic creation and preached Théophile Gautier’s idea of ‘Art for Art’s Sake‘, the motto that summarises the Aesthetic creed. The Decadents, les Maudits (‘the damned’) sought an escape in the paradis artificiels, i.e. imaginary or exotic artificial worlds, also with the help of drugs. In Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) explored new uses of syntax and imagery in an aesthetic philosophy that struggled to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death; in Duino Elegies (1912), the angels represent the power of poetic vision and the poet’s effort to reconcile art and life. The most noted exponents of European Decadentism were novelists: in À Rebours (1884), Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) presented the sensual experiments of the protagonist, Des Esseintes, who leads a solitary, artificial existence in search of rare sensations. The novel included all the tenets of the decadent style: the superiority of art over nature, the interest in perversity and paradox, and a fundamental ennui, or boredom, due to the overexcitement of the senses and the continuous disillusion that comes from the pursuit of strange, subjective and unique moments of pleasure among gross realities. Other Decadent writers were Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) with his novel Il Piacere (1889) and its main character, Andrea Sperelli, and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), with his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 p. 304). In England, John Keats’s cult of beauty ( p. 214) and the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, seeking perfection in a remote art ( p. 261), favoured the development of the Aesthetic movement.

The Victorian Age – Literature that reflects society

IN ACTION Look and think ◀ From left to right,

Drawings that caused

the cover page of The Yellow Book and an illustration of Wilde’s play representing Salomé, who asked her father Herod for the head of John the Baptist. In the illustration, she meets the prophet Jokanaan, who looks at her with suspicion from the left.

a sensation

1 Answer the questions. 1 Why is the cover yellow? 2 Are the figures three or two dimensional? 3 Is Salomé’s dress plain or elaborate, simple or decorated, realistic or stylised in both drawings? 4 What non-Western art does this style remind you of?

Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909), a decadent poet and a Pre-Raphaelite, deeply admired French poetry, and this helped break the conventions of the time. William Morris (1834–96), a Pre-Raphaelite architect and fabric designer, opened the Kelmscott Press in 1891; it issued beautifully crafted books using traditional methods as part of his rejection of consumerist society. In Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), Walter Pater (1839–94), the main theorist of English Aestheticism, refused the idea of an objective reality and universal truths; the only truth lies in sensory impressions given by beautiful objects. Oscar Wilde voiced the same views in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray; the novel also revealed the influence that ‘The Yellow Book‘, a periodical published between 1894 and 1897, had on Wilde. In its first year, the magazine covers were illustrated by Audrey Beardsley, whose drawings for one of Oscar Wilde’s plays, Salomé, were a great scandal in 1894 with their portraits of women as sexually empowered, even predatory, rather than the docile creatures Victorian society expected them to be.

MIND MAP

ethical role

Victorian double life

Literature that reflects society

Early Victorian period

Later Victorian period

Movements of the age

identification with the age

dissatisfaction and rebellion

Realism – Naturalism – Aestheticism – Decadentism

‘Art for Art’s Sake’

Aesteticism and Decadentism superiority of art – perversity and paradox – ennui – overexcitement of the senses – disillusion Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ‘The Yellow Book’

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How did the view of art change over the Victorian Age? 2 How different are writers of the early and later Victorian period? 3 What changed with the advent of Aestheticism and Decadentism?

4 What are Realism, Naturalism, Aestheticism and Decadentism? Present each briefly. 5 Who were the main representatives of these movements in Europe? Specify their nationalities.

Ideas for your map: ART

p. 331

255

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

The Victorian novel The popularity of the novel

▲ English novelist Charles Dickens at a public reading of one of his books

In the Victorian Age, the novel became the dominant form of literature. Middle-class readers identified with the worldview depicted in the novels, even when novelists challenged part of their convictions in the effort of ‘moralising’ society. Many factors contributed to the popularity of the novel: • the appeal of the many genres that Victorian novelists developed, with categories often overlapping in the same work; • the presence of a large number of gifted writers, many of whom were women; • better means of transport made it easier to distribute reading material; • the invention of new printing machinery and public readings, such as those held by Charles Dickens; • the various acts concerning education contributed to a rise in literacy, i.e. being able to read and write: from 53% in 1820 to 76% in 1870; • serialisation, the dominant publication format throughout the 19th century, was a key factor in making novel reading accessible to a larger audience. Serialised novels began at very low prices in the 1820s. However, towards the end of the century, they fell out of favour when inexpensive onevolume reprints of original novels became available. Many periodicals were aimed at a family audience and therefore contents and themes could not be offensive to public morality. More readers from the lower classes were able to read novels as they were cheaper, and popular appeal anticipated ‘mass literature’, while the serial method imposed an episodic structure on the plot and forced writers to find cliffhangers and other stratagems to hold the reader’s attention. Serialisation had its drawbacks. Novels were very long, plots were not coherent and characters were recognisable types (the villain, the prostitute, the orphan, the social climber, etc.) rather than psychologically developed individuals. The recourse to the ‘sensational’ as a way to create suspense led to a mixture of melodrama, mystery, complicated plots and coincidences. Traces of sensationalism can be found in the works of many Victorian novelists, such as Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Brontë sisters in their imaginative Romantic novels.

IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 cliffhanger: arrampicatore / finale sospeso 2 back and forth: avanti e indietro / sopra e sotto 3 to cut off from: includere / escludere Across time and space

Are you an episode-by-episode or a the-whole-story viewer?

Discuss 3 If more viewers continue to consume drama series as if they are a long film to be watched in one or two sittings, will the form and content of TV series shift along with them? Try and imagine the future of the format on the basis of what happened to serialisation in the Victorian Age once cheap one-volume books became available.

In 1841, American readers desperate to know the fate of Little Nell had to wait on the docks of New York City for the ship bringing the last magazine issue of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop to learn whether she was dead or not (and she was). This was probably Dickens’ most acclaimed (and hated, because Nell died) cliffhanger. From this point of view, the Victorian serialised novel resembles television series, with each episode ending with a cliffhanger and with watchers waiting for next week’s/month’s/year’s episode/series. However, habits have been changing with the Internet because now series are streamed or downloaded and some viewers prefer to watch all episodes together to get a better sense of the storyline. 2 Answer the question. 1 How similar are serialised novels and TV series?

256

The Victorian Age – The Victorian novel

▲ Robert William Buss, Dickens’s Dream (1875)

LEARNING DIGITAL T he early Victorian novel

The early Victorian novel Early Victorian novelists turned to the contemporary scene for inspiration as the average Victorian reader of the urban middle classes expected to read a ‘realistic’ book. The novel reflected general moods of optimism and patriotism, shared common values – solid morality, respectability, hard work, the patriarchal system, respect for laws, norms concerning sexual behaviour – but also concerns about the consequences of industrialisation. Thus, it offered its readers both the distraction and the proper moral lessons that Victorian readers desired. As part of the intimate author-reader relationship, the narrator was usually external, reliable, omniscient and often intrusive; his or her voice was heard in the narrative with comments that in turn condemned, praised or gently mocked the characters’ attitudes and behaviours. The narrative developed chronologically and presented the character’s moral development. The first author to develop a narrative which moved back and forth in time with multiple narrators was Emily Brontë (1818–55); Wuthering Heights (1847) challenged all moral standards concerning love and marriage, too.

▲ Elizabeth Gaskell

• ‘The condition-of-England’ novel After Thomas Carlyle, essayist, historian and philosopher, used the expression ‘the condition of England’ in Chartism (1839), the term was used for narrative fiction that engaged directly with contemporary social and political issues: class, labour relations, social unrest and the growing gap and hostility between the rich and the poor. This led to the prevalence in the 1830s and 1840s of the humanitarian or social/problem/industrial novel. Charles Dickens’ social novels denounced the evils caused by industrialisation with the intent to move the middle classes to sympathise with the suffering of the poor, who were cut off from England’s economic prosperity. An early example is Oliver Twist (1837–39 p. 270), a novel which is also a Bildungsroman with its narration of the life and misadventures of poor Oliver. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), one of the many women writers of the age, tried her hand at social novels; her first novel, Mary Barton, published anonymously in 1848, presented the city of Manchester in the 1840s and exposed the problems of rapid industrialisation in the north of England as opposed to the wealthier south.

▲ George Adolphus, The Orphans (1879)

257

• The domestic novel, or the novel of manners

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

The domestic novel found its best representative in William Thackeray (1811–63) with Vanity Fair (1847). The novel satirises the hypocrisy and moral corruption of the upper classes. The subtitle, A Novel without a Hero, reflects the moral ambiguity and lack of ideals of the main characters, especially of Becky Sharp, an amoral adventuress and social climber.

• Romantic novels by women novelists Throughout the 19th century, most women could not attend university; they were isolated in their own homes and chaperoned when travelling. It was therefore through writing fictional stories of adventure, love and fantasy that women were able to break out of their condition. The Brontë sisters, Charlotte ( p. 282) and Emily ( p. 286), became popular in the ‘Golden Age’ of Victorian authoresses; their novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (both published in 1847) highlighted most of the common Victorian themes: sickness, death, and powerful, even elemental love, from a unique female perspective.

MIND MAP

The Victorian novel inspiration from the time

▲ Poster of the 2004 film adaptation of Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair

popular and dominant form of writing

many genres and gifted writers

better means of transport – new printing machinery

serialisation

the early Victorian novel

the ‘condition-ofEngland’ novel – social and political issues

Domestic novel/novel of manners – satire of contemporary times

purpose – distraction and instruction chronological order moral development of characters

Romantic novels – women writers – stories of adventure and love CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–16) with its correct half (a–p).

a a realistic setting which would provide entertainment.

The novel became the dominant form because it was

b the source for inspiration for realistic settings.

Serialisation of novels introduced

c in the work of many writers of the age.

The disadvantages of serialisation were the

The cheap price of the instalments increased

Improvements in printing machinery and transport

The average Victorian reader looked for

f long, sometimes incoherent, plots and characterisation with many stock types.

The domestic novel criticised

g made the circulation of books easier.

Sensationalism was present

The contemporary scene offered Victorian novelists

The narrator was usually external

The ‘condition-of-England’ novel presented

I n his novels, Charles Dickens denounces the exploitation of the weakest members of society

d to escape the conventions of their time. e written for middle-class readers, it was serialised and presented many genres.

h the hypocrisy of the age. i an episodic structure to the plot. j their innate independence combined with a shocking sensuality. k the reading public in anticipation of mass literature. l William Thackeray with Vanity Fair, a satire of the hypocrisy and moral corruption of the upper classes. m but intrusive, as he or she shared the world view of the readers and interpreted the narrative as they would.

T he writer who presented the North-South contrast in England most clearly was

The domestic novel was represented by

Women novelists used writing as a way

o contemporary social and political issues: class, labour relations, social unrest and the growing gap and hostility between the rich and the poor.

I n their novels, Charlotte and Emily Brontë showed both the condition of women in Victorian society and

p such as children, and also the moral degradation induced by Utilitarianism in a unique mix of tragic and comic.

258

The Victorian Age – The early Victorian novel

n Elizabeth Gaskell in Mary Barton, which presents the city of Manchester in the 1840s.

Ideas for your map: EDUCATION

p. 331

The later Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL T he later Victorian novel

The term ‘Later Victorians’ is usually applied to writers who lived during the last twenty years of Victoria’s reign and the early 20th century. Several genres developed, some in connection with the rise of the British Empire and its celebration, others in line with Naturalism that appeared in late 19thcentury European literature together with widespread pessimism, and finally other writers returned to the tradition of the romance, works of popular appeal which challenged realistic conventions.

• The colonial novel The expansion of the British Empire in the last part of the century, mostly notably in India and Africa, led Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) to write the first colonial novels; his works, mostly set in India, justified colonisation and praised the greatness of the British Empire. He coined the expression ‘The white man’s burden‘ for one of his poems; the phrase describes the white man’s moral obligation to instruct other civilisations as regards what is right and wrong, a clear justification of English colonialism based on the ‘inferiority’ of native populations. Kim (1901) revealed Kipling’s sincere fascination for India and its lifestyle, so different from that of Europe. He is also the author of The Jungle Book (1894), a collection of stories for children; they are also set in India and present Mowgli, a boy raised in the jungle, surrounded by animal characters representing human values and attitudes in allegorical form.

• The Naturalist novel Disillusion with the reassuring world view of the early Victorians characterised the representatives of the Naturalist novel in England, which focused on the clash between man and his environment, between his dreams and their fulfilment. The authors were influenced by the Naturalistic novels of Émile Zola (1840–1902). Naturalism developed in France at the end of the 19th century and grew from an interest in new scientific discoveries, mainly those in the field of biology with the theories of Charles Darwin (1809–82), which had led to Social Darwinism. Naturalism presented a view of man as a creature conditioned by heredity, by his own environment and by the circumstances of the moment, with no free will and at the mercy of an indifferent Fate. Writers presented case histories, described with the detached precision of an impersonal and objective scientist. George Eliot (1819–80 p. 292) was one of the many women novelists of the Victorian Age; in her works (her masterpiece is Middlemarch, published in 1871–72), she presented the cases of social outsiders with realism and psychological insight. The philosophies of Feuerbach with The Essence of Christianity, and of Spinoza with Ethics influenced her in her agnosticism, though she respected religious tradition as a source of social order and morality. In his major work,Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) explored and developed the concept of predestination which he derived from the naturalistic notion of ‘heredity’.

▶ Scene from the 1994 film adaptation of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

259

• The crime novel and the romance

IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 clash: confrontation / agreement 2 insight: bad / good observation 3 agnosticism: lack of political / religious beliefs 4 reverie: pleasant / unpleasant fantasies 5 non sequiturs: conclusions that are logically / not logically drawn 6 neologism: archaic / newly coined words

Rebellion against the Victorian values of morality, superficial optimism and illusory self-confidence found its way into crime and horror novels represented by The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94 p. 296). He was the first to develop Edgar Allan Poe’s lesson in psychological analysis of deeply disturbed characters ( p. 232), although Stevenson’s works were more overtly allegorical and symbolical than Poe’s short stories. A reaction to the novel as the vehicle of a moral message also came with the renewed popularity of the romance in novel form. In Phantases (1858) by George MacDonald (1824–1905), a Scottish minister and author, Anodos, the protagonist, meets the inhabitants of an enchanted world, and learns to be a good man connected with the divine. Lewis Carroll (1832–98 Digital resources) introduced reveries, comic disproportions, non sequiturs and odd neologisms in his nonsensical works of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Alice through the Looking Glass (1871).

They said of this …

Are you a realist or a romance reader? All through the 19th century and our own, there has also been a flourishing development of romance and fantasy. The success of Tolkien’s book Lord of the Rings in the mid-fifties helped to show that the tradition behind it, of George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll and William Morris, was, if not ‘the Great’ tradition, a tradition nonetheless. In realistic fiction, authors try to avoid coincidence, that is they try to conceal their designs, pretending that things are happening out of inherent probability. The problem is normally: ‘given these characters, what will happen?’. Romance is more usually ‘sensational’, that is it moves from one discontinuous episode to another, describing things that happen to characters. (Abridged from Northop Frye, The Secular Scripture,1976)

2 Answer the questions. 1 What makes romantic storytelling different from realistic storytelling? 2 What work was fundamental in freeing the energy of popular culture in the 20th century?

MIND MAP

influences – rise of the British Empire – Naturalism

Discuss 3 Frye claims when it comes to reading novels, it is better not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, i.e. the pleasure of reading for the sake of reading itself rather than for learning a moral lesson. Organise into groups and find at least five good reasons in favour of realistic novels, and five in favour of romances.

The later Victorian novel

Colonial novel

Naturalistic novel

praise of colonialism and Empire

crime novel and romance

man vs environment – case histories

crime and horror novels

realism and psychological insight

romance in novel form

predestination

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the notes.

novels of

of a scientist.

1 Genres popular with the Later Victorian novelists: the colonial novel, novel, the

the

2 Rudyard Kipling’s novels: mostly set in

novel and the romance. , justify

as ‘The white man’s burden’, i.e. the white man’s moral other civilisations as regards what is right

obligation to

– George Eliot: presentation of cases of – Thomas Hardy:

/horror stories;

analysis of deeply disturbed characters in

, between his dreams and their fulfilment. Naturalism

260

connected to ‘heredity’.

4 Robert Louis Stevenson: writer of and symbolical way.

3 Naturalism: man was considered as a creature conditioned by developed in

with realism

and psychological insights.

and

: writers presented case histories, with the

and authors were influenced by the

The Victorian Age – The later Victorian novel

5 Lewis Carroll:

works, comic disproportions, and odd neologisms.

Ideas for your map: REALISM/ROMANCE

p. 331

Victorian poetry LEARNING DIGITAL V ictorian poetry PDF

Robert Browning DT31 My Last Duchess

▲ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

The Garlanded Woman (1873)

Unlike the novelists of social novels, Victorian poets were not concerned with the social issues of the age. Their poems dealt with the praise of British imperialism or psychological introspection in the form of the dramatic monologue. The only poet interested in social issues was Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61); she discussed not only the female condition, but also industrialisation, religious controversy and slavery because she believed that poets were responsible for guiding society to greater equality through their art. British imperialism was visible in poetry; Alfred Tennyson dedicated The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) to the heroism of British soldiers during the Crimean war, and Rudyard Kipling defended racist imperialism in The White Man’s Burden (1899), a poem which exhorted the USA to conquer the Philippines in the name of the white man’s supposed ‘racial superiority’. Religion also found its way into Victorian poetry with the devotional verse of Christina Rossetti (1830–94 p. 264) and of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Cristina Rossetti also wrote children’s poems and nursery rhymes, which have become very popular. Hopkins’ poems were characterised by unconventional, striking imagery and a unique verse form known as ‘sprung rhythm‘. The two major poets, Robert Browning (1812–89) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), felt that they had a responsibility towards their public and that, through their poems, they needed to be the voice of their age. The union of the conventions of drama, fiction and lyric led to the dramatic monologue by a fictional or historical character and addressed to a silent listener. While Browning’s study of characters was psychologically accurate, Tennyson preferred pictorial details and sensual imagery. Dissatisfied with the ‘poor taste’ of Victorian life, in 1848 some artists, both writers and painters, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included, among others, the poets and painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82), Christina Rossetti (1830–94), William Morris (1834–96) and Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909). They advocated a return to the simplicity, naturalness and spirituality of medieval Italian painting before Raphael, and the superiority of artistic expression in a world dominated by materialism and compromise. After a short life, in 1854 the group split up.

IN ACTION Across time and space

The voices of the coloniser and the colonised Derek Walcott ( p. 530), the Nobel Prize-winning poet from Saint Lucia, an island in the West Indies, talked about the British Empire in The Lost Empire (2010), but as a citizen of a former British colony, his stance on imperialism is different from that of Kipling in The White Man’s Burden. For Kipling, sending soldiers to the colonies is a moral obligation, a ‘burden’ that he exhorts his readers to take up. For Walcott the Empire was a stain on the map of the world that suddenly vanished, leaving nothing behind after its red stain had symbolically marked a school boy’s shirt (The British Empire was usually represented in red on maps). This may be an allusion to the violence needed to impose colonisation. ▲ Derek Walcott

Take up the White Man’s burden– Send forth the best ye breed– Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; (Rudyard Kipling)___

________________________

And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden. Its victories were air, its dominions dirt: Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, the Sudan. The map that had seeped1 its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt like red ink on a blotter2, battles, long sieges. (Derek Walcott) _________

1 seeped: sparso

2 blotter: carta assorbente

1 As a Caribbean, Walcott is critical of the domination of the British on his island. Do you know of any other writer who criticised the oppression their people were the victim of?

261

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

MIND MAP

Victorian poetry

Alfred Tennyson – Robert Browning

Christina Rossetti – Gerard Manley Hopkins

psychological introspection – dramatic monologue

devotional poetry

praise of imperialism

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

writers and painters – medieval painting – simplicity and naturalness

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the text with the given words. splendour • Gabriel Rossetti • simplicity • silent • character • Morris • introspection • female • devotional • mellifluous • superiority • reflected • Swinburne • ambiguities • sprung • imperialism • Tennyson • pictorial

Victorian poetry With the only exception of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who discussed the (1)

condition, but also other contemporary

social and political issues, Victorian poets never tried to address the uncertainties and issues of the age but just (2) , its glory and (4)

tensions and (3)

Poetry ranged from praise of British (5)

many

. (with Tennyson and Kipling) to psychological (6)

in the

dramatic monologues (with Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson) and innovative (7)

poetry with Christina Rossetti

and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The dramatic monologue was a revelation addressed to a (8)

listener by a fictional or historical

(9)

, and it revealed deep psychological insight in Browning’s hands, while Hopkins’ ‘(10)

(his original version of alliterative verse) was totally unlike the often (11)

rhythm’

and highly musical poems that prevailed in the

Victorian Age. Like Alfred (12)

the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Dante (13)

Christina Rossetti, William (14)

and Algernon

Charles (15) preferred (16) details and sensual imagery, advocated a return to the (17) and spirituality of medieval Italian painting before Raphael, and praised the (18)

of artistic

expression in a world dominated by materialism and compromise. ▶ English painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (left) in the drawing room of his home at 16, Cheyne Walk, London, reading from his Ballads and Sonnets to critic and poet Theodore Watts-Dunton.

262

The Victorian Age – Victorian poetry

Ideas for your map: INTROSPECTION

p. 331

Victorian drama LEARNING DIGITAL V ictorian drama

Throughout the first half of the Victorian Age, British drama suffered an eclipse. Victorian audiences went to the theatre to be amused by farce and melodrama. Actor-managers adopted more realistic scenic effects with artificial lighting and expensive and realistic stage props. Great actors such as Edmund Kean and Sarah Siddons asked for high salaries, which added to the cost of staging. Thus, show business was born; it tended to have a fixed repertoire that ensured high revenues for actor-managers. The influence of French ‘well-made plays’, perfectly constructed comedies written with the sole purpose of entertaining rich audiences, did not help English drama to move forward. However, new impulse from Russia, Sweden and Norway had a positive effect on British drama in the last quarter of the century. Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), a Russian short-story writer and a playwright, wrote plays based on character delineation, replacing lack of action with a constant inquiry into the psychology of his characters. August Strindberg (1844–1912), a Swedish playwright, combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama. Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), from Norway, wrote problem plays; he thoroughly modified the structure of the play by introducing the retrospective method. He omitted the exposition phase and started his plays just before the climax. For Ibsen, the stage was an instrument for social criticism, especially of the middle classes, but with precise psychological exploration and realism in characterisation and language. Two great dramatists renewed drama near the end of the century, Oscar Wilde (1854–1900 p. 302) and George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). Wilde wrote nine witty comedies, the most popular being The Importance of Being Earnest (1898) and a tragedy, Salomé. Shaw, a dramatist and a leader of the Fabian Society, wrote discussion plays characterised by lively dialogues which developed philosophical and social themes in a conflict of ideas.

MIND MAP

eclipse of drama

farce and melodrama

actor-managers – show business

French ‘wellmade plays’

Victorian drama

new influences

Oscar Wilde

Russia: Chekhov

Sweden: Strindberg

Norway: Ibsen

psychology of charaters

psychology and Naturalism

problem plays – social criticism

G.B. Shaw

comedy of manners

discussion plays – conflict of ideas

▶ Maggie Smith as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why were farce and melodrama popular in the Victorian Age? 2 What were the negative aspects connected with the birth of show business? 3 What influence did the ‘well-made plays’, perfectly constructed French comedies, have on Victorian drama? 4 Which foreign writers had a positive impact on British drama?

Ideas for your map: SOCIAL ISSUES

p. 331

263

ACROSS TIME Devotional poetry AND SPACE Christina Rossetti

LIFE

WORK

• Christina Rossetti (1830–94) was the youngest child of the Italian poet and political exile Gabriele Rossetti. • Her brother, Dante Gabriel, was one of the leading figures of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood; he chose her as the model for the Virgin in his paintings.

During her life, Christina Rossetti was recognised as an extremely gifted poet showing her talent in romantic, devotional and also children’s poems. Her In the Bleak Midwinter is commonly performed as a Christmas carol. More than half of her poetic output is devotional. The inconstancy of human love, the vanity of earthly pleasures, renunciation, individual unworthiness and the perfection of divine love are recurring themes in her poetry.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

▲ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1 water’d shoot: germoglio annaffiato 2 thickset fruit: ricchi frutti 3 paddles… sea: sguazza in un mare felice 4 Raise…down: piedistallo di seta e piuma 5 with vair… dyes: con disegni e tinte porpora (‘vair’ è il ripetersi regolare di forme negli stemmi araldici) 6 peacocks… eyes: pavoni dai cento occhi (il riferimento è alle piume del pavone decorate da occhi) 7 fleurs-de-lys: fior di giglio, il simbolo della regalità in Francia (il giglio è anche uno dei fiori collegati alla resurrezione di Cristo) 8 L’autrice cita spesso nelle sue opere la Seconda Venuta di Cristo, che porrà fine al mondo e lo riunirà a lui, ‘the ultimate Birthday‘

264

The Victorian Age

T40 A Birthday 47 The poem conveys the joy and comfort that come from the presence of a certain lover, in language similar to that used in the Old Testament book, the Song of Songs, which celebrates the love between God and Israel as the intense and also sexual relationship between two lovers. Whether this lover in Rossetti’s poem is Jesus, a spouse or someone else is not revealed.

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot1; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit2; 5 My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea3; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down4; 10 Hang it with vair and purple dyes5; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes6; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys7; 15 Because the birthday of my life8 Is come, my love is come to me.

UNDERSTAND 1 Answer the questions. 1 What does the speaker compare her heart to?

2 Is the speaker asking or ordering readers to join her celebration?

ANALYSE 2 Answer the questions. 1 What areas does the speaker draw from as she gives orders to prepare for the feast? 2 Which details in the imagery may hint at the ‘special nature’ of the speaker’s love? 3 What is the visual imagery like? Choose from among the following. exuberant deliberately plain luxurious

rich

4 What does the central metaphor (‘the birthday of my life’) of the poem mean? Choose the correct options. a

The speaker celebrates a new beginning in her life.

The speaker rejoices in the return of her love.

The speaker wonders whether her love will come back on her birthday.

The speaker rejoices in the return of Christ, her love.

5 Parallelisms and anaphora are typical, as examples of repetition, of the language of the Bible. At the same time, what feeling do they convey? INTERPRET 3 Do you think this poem works as a romantic love poem, too?

THE ARTS

The women of the Pre-Raphaelites John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelites in 1848. They rejected the art of the Renaissance in favour of art before Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo (15th–16th centuries), and painted directly from nature itself, as truthfully as possible and with incredible attention to detail. They were inspired by the advice of John Ruskin, the English critic and art theorist who encouraged artists to go back to nature.

Ophelia (1851–52) by John Everett Millais

The Blue Bower (1865) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The painting depicts Ophelia’s singing nonsensical songs while floating in a river just before she drowns. Her pale face contrasts with the vivid colours of the flora of the river and the riverbank.

The model for the painting was Fanny Cornforth, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s mistress. The small Japanese musical instrument that she is playing, the koto, suggests her role of a geisha, a mistress in the Japanese world.

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. Ophelia 1 How accurate are the details of the floating dress, the leaves and flowers? 2 How do we understand that Ophelia is starting to sink into the water, pulled down by the weight of her own dress? 3 Is she fighting to stay afloat? 4 What feelings does the painting evoke in you? The Blue Bower 5 What colour is the decoration that the woman is wearing in her hair? 6 Does the decoration match any other detail of the portrait in colour?

7 How would you describe the woman’s expression? Choose all the correct options. modest

slightly irritated

ashamed

watchful

sensual

petulant

8 Does she look interested in the musical instrument she is playing? 9 Who do you think shows more energy and personality, Ophelia or Fanny? Web quest 2 Look for more famous female portraits which were made before or after the Pre-Raphaelites, and prepare a slide show with a few words of comment about the way various artists depicted women without or while objectifying them.

265

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

LEARNING DIGITAL C harles Dickens and Oliver Twist PPT

Charles Dickens

PDF

The workhouse system

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Search the web to see Dickens’ tomb in Westminster Abbey. What does the inscription say of him? Do you think it is a good epitaph for the writer?

Profile The short work experience at a shoe polish factory with its inhumane working conditions had a profound psychological effect on young Charles, but it also gave him a first-hand experience of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Similarly, his desire for a good education and the imprisonment suffered by his father made him sensitive to such problems as education and the need for fair laws. He despised the judicial system, which he felt had unfairly sent his father to prison for debt. Dickens was the first English novelist to depict the emerging working class and their social problems during the Industrial Revolution and to write social novels which threw a revealing light on some of the miseries of the Victorian Age. He is considered one of England’s greatest novelists for his ability to portray the society of his times and his mastery in mixing the comic and the tragic, the grotesque and the beautiful, with also a touch of Gothicism in his description of London’s most sordid environments.

Themes Dickens criticised the evils that he saw by showing his empathy for the common man and his love for children, who are often the protagonists of his novels. They are defenceless victims of the cruelty and exploitation of adults, but retain their state of innocence under all circumstances and contribute to the happy endings of Dickens’ novels with their kindness, acceptance and forgiveness of all, as happens with Oliver Twist ( p. 270). Philanthropy plays a crucial role in the resolution of plots and amends what is wrong. Dickens focused on individuals’ sense of solidarity rather than on reforms or class struggle, as he fully shared Victorian values such as hard work and family life. His social commitment made him draw public attention to crucial subjects like the workhouse system, the exploitation of children, the unfair judicial system, the prison system, parliamentary corruption, education and the inhuman aspects of Utilitarianism, a doctrine which relied on statistics, rules and regulations and left no room for individualism or imagination. In Oliver Twist he used an orphan child exposed to the evils of industrial society as a social commentary, while Bleak House and Little Dorrit attacked the Victorian institutions: the interminable cases that destroyed people’s lives in Bleak House, and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient, corrupt government offices and unregulated market speculation. Education was one of his most consistent concerns as he realised it was vitally important for the development of a fairer society. In Nicholas Nickleby, the brutal and abusive Wackford Squeers, the owner of Dotheboys Hall, a boarding school in Yorkshire, starves, whips and beats his pupils, and only accepts unwanted children from rich families for high fees in order to become rich out of the children’s misery. In Hard Times, Dickens showed that a utilitarian curriculum, with no space for imaginative learning and no games, turned pupils into unhappy, emotionally sterile adults, incapable of leading a decent life. On the other hand, Dickens rejected education whenever it developed into an obsession for social prestige and self-disgust for one’s roots. In Great Expectations, the educated characters lose their dignity and identity. 266

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1812 Dickens was born in Portsmouth into a family of modest means; his father tended to spend more money than he could afford.

1816–22 The family lived in Chatham, Kent, where young Dickens spent a happy childhood in beautiful surroundings.

1824 KEY FACT After two years in Camden Town, a poor neighbourhood in London, Dickens’ father was imprisoned for debt. Charles worked ten hours a day in a shoe polish factory for a few months until the debts were paid off.

WORKS

1827 KEY FACT After a short period of schooling, Dickens started to work as an office boy in a law office to help his family.

1830 He worked as a freelance reporter after teaching himself shorthand. 1833 He began to contribute short stories and essays to periodicals.

1836 KEY FACT He married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle‘, had his first works successfully published and became a full-time writer.

1836–37

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

1837–39

The Adventures of Oliver Twist p. 270

1842 He travelled with his wife to the US, Canada, Italy and Switzerland.

1838

Nicholas Nickleby

1843

1858 He started to do public readings of his works; he divorced his wife, and continued his relationship with another woman.

1854

A Christmas Carol

Hard Times p. 276

1849–50

1857

1853

1859

David Copperfield Bleak House

1870 After his death he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

1860–61

Great Expectations

Little Dorrit A Tale of Two Cities

IN ACTION They said of this…

The works of Charles Dickens His revolt was simply and solely the eternal revolt; it was the revolt of the weak against the strong. He did not dislike this or that argument for oppression; he disliked oppression. He disliked a certain look on the face of a man when he looks down on another man. Dickens attacks the modern workhouse with a sort of inspired simplicity as a boy in a fairy tale who had wandered about, sword in hand, looking for ogres and who had found an indisputable ogre. All the other people of his time are attacking things because they are bad economics or because they are bad politics, or because they are bad science; he alone is attacking things because they are bad. (From Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens,1911)

2 Answer the questions. 1 What did Dickens revolt against? 2 Who does Chesterton compare Dickens to? 3 Why did Dickens attack such unfair institutions as the workhouse?

▲ Workhouse at St James’s parish, London

Style With humour and irony, Dickens painted a portrait of London in melodramatic tones that shocked many of his readers, but also revitalised their desire for justice, mercy, and kindness. Another notable quality of Dickens’ works was his ability to portray characters and describe places. He had an in-depth knowledge of London, as he loved walking around the city at all times, and he was fascinated with the theatre. His interests explain his love for dialogue, which he used brilliantly in his novels to depict characters and their interactions, and the preference for London, especially the most degraded areas, as the setting for his works.

Publication in instalments Most of Dickens’ major novels – The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol – were first written in monthly or weekly instalments in journals and later reprinted in book form. The episodic structure enabled Dickens to regularly introduce cliffhangers and change the story according to the reactions of the public to what happened in each chapter. He was accused of over-sentimentalism and melodramatic plotting, but he claimed that the alternation of comic and tragic in his works, and the abundance of feelings, came from life itself. 267

IN ACTION

The Bildungsroman and the novel with a purpose

Key words

Some of Dickens’ novels fall into the category of the Bildungsroman, or ‘novel of education’ or ‘coming-of-age’, because his characters develop from childhood to adult age or to some other phase of their life. At the same time, many of Dickens’ works are ‘novels with a purpose’; he saw himself as a moraliser addressing individual consciences in order to bring about change and improve society. His first Bildungsroman was Oliver Twist; Oliver is an orphan child who finally finds his origins and is adopted by a benefactor who offers him the love that he deserves. In David Copperfield, Dickens used a first-person narrator for the story of another unlucky child attending a boarding school, working in a factory in London and finding real love in the end. In Great Expectations, the author returned to the coming-of-age theme. The protagonist, Pip, is a young man who desires to live the life of a gentleman. Thanks to the generosity of a benefactor he moves to London, where he is brought up in high society only to gradually realise the great injustices hiding just beneath the surface.

3 Match each word/expression (1–4) to its definition (a–d). 1

philanthropy

coming-of-age

social commitment

boarding school

a a school that provides accommodation and meals for pupils during term time b an important step/event in a character’s life that marks the transition to adulthood c the promotion of others’ well-being by donations and free help d the positive action towards the general welfare of one’s community

MIND MAP

working classes

mix of comic and tragic

Charles Dickens

evils of Victorian society

hard work – family life

happy ending

workhouse system

philanthropy

Bildungsroman – novel with a purpose

instalments

episodic structure

writer as a moraliser

exploitation of children

oversentimentalism

judicial system

melodramatic plotting

Oliver Twist – David Copperfield – Great Expectations

Utilitarianism – education CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which contradicting aspects are fused in Dickens’ works?

4 What characterises Dickens’ style?

2 What social problems did Dickens reveal in his novels?

5 Why was serialisation important for Dickens’ novels?

3 Which personal experience may have determined Dickens’ interest in the specific social evils of his time?

6 Which novels by Dickens can be seen as examples of Bildungsroman?

FIRST

2 READ the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Andover Workhouse Scandal

male inmates had (2)

shreds of meat and marrow left on the bones they had been told to crush for fertiliser. Andover had a reputation for strictness, run as it was (3)

Despite a strict set of guidelines and rules, workhouses weren’t

and expenditure (4)

always run (0) with the welfare of the inmates in mind and,

Complaints (5)

(1)

(6)

a result, a number of scandals hit the

fighting over the rotten

a former sergeant major, kept to a minimum. the lack of food were common inmates, and vagrants in particular often

headlines during the 19th century. One such incident occurred in the

claimed they did not receive the rations they (7)

Andover union workhouse in 1845 after it emerged that underfed

entitled to.

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Ideas for your map: CHILDHOOD

p. 331

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Childhood denied

AGENDA 2030

Main international conventions • International Labour Organization (ILO) – Convention No. 138 concerning minimum age for admission to employment (1973) • The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning the rights of the children as a specific vulnerable group (1989) • International Labour Organization (ILO) – Convention No. 182 concerning the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (1999) In the least developed countries, slightly more than one in four children (aged 5 to 17) are engaged in labour that is considered harmful to their health and development. Child labour is also common in the most dangerous places where instability or armed conflict exist. Poverty is the primary reason children are sent to work, and this prevents children from getting the education they need to break the cycle of poverty. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, about 70% of child labourers work in agriculture. Others work long hours in factories, mines, building sites, domestic service, or forced labour, such as child soldiers and children exploited in the commercial sex trade. Those who are forced to become soldiers suffer terrible physical and mental harm and abuse, as well as sexual exploitation. Child domestic workers are also at risk of sexual abuse and violence. After a period of decline, child labour percentages started rising again in 2016, and the difficult post COVID-19 economic situation may make it difficult for many countries to meet their official development assistance (ODA) commitments. Some may decide to make cuts on social spending programmes.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is the main cause of child labour? 2 What kind of jobs do children do? 3 What may the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis be?

WRITE CREATIVE 3 Alejandra is a 12-year-old girl who works all day. Tell her story on the basis of the following prompts. • Father Don José wakes her up at 4 a.m. – no breakfast, carries cigars to repel mosquitoes • collects curiles, small molluscs in the mangrove swamps on the island of Espiritu Santo in Usulutan, El Salvador, all day

DISCUSS 2 Go through the list of possible initiatives to fight child labour, and agree on the three most successful ones. Give reasons for your choices.

• no shoes, works in the mud, bad weather, among mosquitoes – body often covered with bites

• Providing good schools at no cost to families

• no time to play – doesn’t want to either – other children say that she smells bad and exclude her from their games

• Providing support for parents to improve their incomes and food security

• two baskets of curiles a day – worth little more than 12 colones, or $1.40

• Advocating for national child labour laws and their enforcement • Educating communities so that they monitor vulnerable children to keep them out of dangerous work and help their families survive without their child’s income • Sponsoring a child’s education so that they have more opportunities to pursue jobs in their future lives

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837–39)

Full plot From The Adventures of Oliver Twist DT32 Oliver becomes a thief DT33 Jacob’s island DT34 Sad and happy memories

PDF

The Adventures of Oliver Twist was published in instalments from 1837 to 1839. One of Dickens’ most popular works, it is a story of poverty, crime and the horrors of the workhouse and the underworld. The novel shows the workhouse system for what it was, an unfair disgusting reality, and the world of criminals living next to ‘respectable’ people. Bill Sikes, the criminal who murders Nancy, the young prostitute who tries to protect innocent Oliver, dies in the mud of ‘Folly Ditch’ in Jacob’s Island, a notorious slum on the south bank of the River Thames.

THE PLOT IN ACTION English in action 1 Match each word (1–6) to its definition (a–f). 1

able-bodied

harsh

inmate

pauper

tainted

sinfulness

a morally wrong behaviour b strong and in good health c a very poor person d spoiled

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England and his mother dies in childbirth. After nine years in an orphanage, he is transferred to a workhouse. He is poorly fed and when he asks for more food, he is sold as an apprentice to an undertaker, who treats him so badly that he runs away to London. There, he becomes a member of Fagin’s gang. Fagin, a career criminal, takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. On Oliver’s first pickpocket expedition the victim, Mr Brownlow, a well-off gentleman, rescues the child from arrest and takes him to his house. Fagin and Bill Sikes, a brutal cruel burglar in Fagin’s gang, kidnap the child, and Oliver is forced to join a burglary expedition with Sikes and another accomplice in the house of Mrs Maylie, a kind wealthy old woman, and Rose, her adoptive daughter. Oliver is shot, and the two women keep him with them. Fagin and Monks, a mysterious man, still try to ruin Oliver, but Nancy, a prostitute and Sikes’ lover, reveals their plot, and pays with her life for that, because Sikes kills her and then accidentally hangs himself. Oliver comes back to his native town with Mr Brownlow, Mrs Maylie and Rose, and his origins are revealed. He is Monks’ half-brother and Rose’s nephew, and he has his inheritance restored. Monks escapes to the New World, while Fagin is arrested and hanged. Mr Brownlow adopts Oliver who finally finds the happiness and peace that he deserves.

e hard and cruel f person confined in a prison or hospital

Themes • The evils of Victorian society The book called the public’s attention to various contemporary evils, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, the presence of ‘street children’ and the New Poor Law. Passed in 1834, this law encouraged large-scale development of workhouses run by groups of church parishes, where the poor were segregated into four distinct groups: the aged and infirm, children, able-bodied males and able-bodied females. Families were split up and hardly ever reunited. The poor were held responsible for their misery – they did not have ‘industry’, the hardworking quality of respectable middle-class citizens who saw in their wealth the sign of God’s preference – and the harsh treatment of ‘inmates’ was supposed to encourage them to look for a better life. The terrible depiction of the poor, especially children, was a shock to public opinion.

• The innocence of the child Influenced by his own difficult childhood, Dickens often wrote about the importance of the preservation of goodness and innocence of children. With Oliver and the many children in his novels, such as David Copperfield, Dickens depicts both their unfortunate condition in the Victorian Age and the universal theme of the oppression of the weak by the strong. With the character of Oliver, an orphan, Dickens shows how the innocence of children may be tainted by the sinfulness of their parents, or the cruelty of schoolmasters and strangers, such as Fagin, Oliver Twist’s antagonist. Fagin is an old man powerfully represented as a devilish figure who wants to make a thief out of poor, innocent Oliver, and tries to corrupt the child’s nature. Children are always redeemed in the end, however, because their original purity, a myth of perfect innocence to Dickens, is never really lost. All suffering ends with the final happy ending, when Oliver is restored to those who love him. 270

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Charles Dickens IN ACTION They said of this…

London’s poverty Henry Mayhew, a journalist, wrote a series of articles about London’s poverty-stricken inhabitants. He described the inmates of a common lodging house, a form of cheap accommodation for various people: ‘The pickpockets lodging there consist of handkerchief stealers, shoplifters ... Besides pickpockets, there are also lodging in the house speculators in stolen goods … I have known, says my informant, these speculators to wait in the kitchen, walking about with their hands in their pockets till a little fellow would come in with such a thing as a piece of bacon, or a piece of mutton. They would purchase it, and then either retail it amongst the other lodgers in the kitchen or take it to some fence, where they would receive a profit upon it.’ 2 Answer the questions. 1 What kind of people live together in the common lodging house? 2 How do speculators take advantage of younger inhabitants bringing food to the house? 3 Given that the condition of the people living in these houses was not economically good, do they show any sign of solidarity towards those living with them?

▲ A famous scene from the 2005 film adaptation of Dickens’ novel directed by Roman Polanski

MIND MAP

child labour and criminality

The Adventures of Oliver Twist

workhouses

innocence of the child

oppression of the weak

New Poor Law

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the table with notes. Publication

Main themes

Workhouse system

Childhood

Ending

Ideas for your map: POVERTY

p. 331

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T41 Oliver starved to death 48 Oliver Twist

At the workhouse, children are separated from their parents; they do not go to school and they live in miserable conditions, and there is so little food that they are all desperately hungry all the time. 1 Complete the summary with the given words. months • criminal • prayers • meals • report • hungry

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The children gather in the room where the (1)

are served; they are very (2)

because they have been inadequately fed for three (3)

and Oliver is chosen by the other

children to request more food. After being served their meal, having said their (4)

and eaten

all the food, he goes to Mr Bumble and asks for more food. The man is shocked and runs to the Board to (5)

what has happened; they all agree that Oliver is a (6)

and that he will be

hanged one day. Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What food are the boys usually served, and is it adequate for their condition? Why?/Why not?

2 How do they choose the boy that will ask Mr Bumble?

The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, with a copper1 at one end, out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel2 at mealtimes. Of this festive composition3 each boy had one porringer4, and no more – except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and 5 a quarter of bread besides. 5 6 The bowls never wanted washing . The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring7 at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking8 their fingers most assiduously, with the view 10 of catching up any stray splashes9 of gruel that might have been cast thereon10. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation11 for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted12 darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin 15 of gruel per diem13, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly14 youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast15 who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to16 Oliver Twist. The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed 20 himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace17 was said over the short commons18. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered to each other, and winked19 at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged20 1 copper: pentolone di rame 2 ladled the gruel: scodellava la farinata (avena bollita nell’acqua, decisamente povera dal punto di vista nutritivo) 3 festive composition: festosa organizzazione 4 porringer: scodellina

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5 The bowls... washing: Non serviva lavare le ciotole 6 polished: lucidavano 7 staring: fissando 8 sucking: succhiandosi 9 stray splashes: schizzi sparsi 10 thereon: sopra (le dita) 11 starvation: inedia 12 hinted: fecero cenno

13 per diem: al giorno 14 weakly: deboluccio 15 lots were cast: tirarono a sorte 16 and it fell to: e la sorte scelse 17 grace: preghiera di ringraziamento 18 commons: pasto 19 winked: facevano l’occhiolino 20 nudged: davan dentro di gomito

Charles Dickens

3 Is Oliver arrogant or polite in his request? 4 How does Mr Bumble react to Oliver’s first request?

5 Why does Mr Limbkins want Mr Bumble to repeat his words?

6 What does Mr Limbkins predict for Oliver’s future?

him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless21 with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat 25 alarmed at his own temerity: “Please, sir, I want some more.” The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support22 to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear. 30 “What!” said the master at length23, in a faint voice. “Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.” The master aimed a blow24 at Oliver’s head with the ladle25; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle26. The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in 35 great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, “Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!” There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance. “For more!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?” 40 “He did, sir,” replied Bumble. “That boy will be hung”27 said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.” (From Chapter 2) 21 reckless: spericolato 22 clung for support: si appoggiò per sostenersi

23 at length: infine 24 aimed a blow: cercò di colpire 25 ladle: mestolo 26 beadle: sagrestano

27 hung: impiccato (crimini come omicidio o furto erano punibili con la pena di morte. Oliver, si predice, è già un criminale e farà la fine che merita)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

b The boys were starving and would eat anything.

1 Find all the words/expressions that show the children’s terrible hunger. Which sentence clearly summarises their condition?

c He can’t control himself and his hunger.

2 Who is Oliver’s antagonist in the scene, and how different are they from the physical point of view?

6 What is the narrator’s attitude to the workhouse system and its treatment of children? Choose the correct option. a

I t is condemned openly by the narrator, who is disgusted by the adults’ cruelty.

4 Match the examples of verbal irony (1–4) to their real meanings (a–d).

I t is exposed, and the narrator highlights the injustices to the reader through hyperbole and irony.

I t is neither condemned nor justified; the narrator hides his/her view from the reader.

3 What does situational irony consist of in the text?

l.3: ‘festive composition’

l.6: ‘The boys polished (the bowls)’

l.29: ‘the small rebel’

l.35: ‘in solemn conclave’

a The boys eagerly ate up all the food. b a starving child c an ordinary meeting d the insufficient food 5 Match the hyperbolic elements (1–3) to their meanings (a–d). 1

l.9: ‘(the boys) could have devoured the very bricks’

l .16–17: ‘he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him’

l.18: ‘A council was held’

a The boys meet and talk.

INTERPRET 7 Do you think that Dickens has managed to show his contempt for The Poor Law of 1834 and the misery it created? DEBATE 8 Debate the statement in groups.

The government should provide for the poor. Group A believe that the poor should be granted economic assistance by the government. Group B believe that the poor should be encouraged to provide for themselves. PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

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StoryTelling No more workhouses! • Here is a petition that might have been submitted by Oliver Twist to the British Parliament in the 1840s, when the devastating consequences of the Poor Law Act were there for all to see.

To the British Prime Minister, William Lamb (Lord Melbourne) Members of the Poor Law Commission My name is Oliver Twist and I am submitting this petition to urge you to cancel The Poor Law Act of 1834. I am a twenty-two-year-old man who has experienced the adversity of child poverty. In fact, I was born and raised in one of the workhouses established with the ‘New’ Poor Law of 1834, whose devastating consequences I have suffered for many years. After that, a stroke of luck changed my life for the better, giving me the opportunity to flee from the abyss of misery and exploitation. The government’s intention was for workhouses to substitute the parish poorhouses, which offered families support from the local community in terms of money, food or clothes, etc. This could help families to survive and lead a dignified life. But parish poorhouses have been swept away by the Poor Laws and their Amendments. With the workhouse system, homes have been broken up, family members separated. Instead of providing a refuge for the poor, the workhouse institution has set up a cruel system of exploitation. Workhouses have become miserable places, prisons where the only option is forced labour in exchange for poor subsistence in the hands of ruthless administrators and guardians whose only concern is personal profit and reward. From my own personal experience, I can tell you that workhouse children lack the food, sanitation, health care and education they need to survive and grow healthily. Because of their poor living standards, they develop fewer skills and, as adults, are much more likely to develop anti-social behaviour and fall victim to alcohol and crime. With this petition I urge the government to ban workhouses and to invest in social protection and education to effectively fight child poverty and end child abuse. Businesses, banks and insurance companies have grown incredibly rich in the last fifty years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They should be encouraged to contribute to social progress. It is time for the ‘haves’ to do their part in favour of the ‘have-nots’. Only political will can lead to significant change. But change can only happen if more and more people make their voices heard. It is through our collective support that we can transform our society for the better. Oliver Twist ▲ Illustration for Oliver Twist,

showing poor Oliver asking for more food in the workhouse.

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The Victorian Age

Please sign this petition!

▶ Scene from the 2005 film adaptation of the novel directed by Roman Polanski showing Oliver Twist in the workhouse.

STEP 1

THINK • Nearly two centuries after the publication of Dickens’ novels, the issues of poverty and inequality have not been resolved. In some cases, the line between wealth and poverty seems to resemble that of early 19th-century England. Think of a modern version of one of Dickens’ ‘have-not’ teenage characters.

STEP 2

DISCUSS AND DECIDE • In group discuss and decide on • the protagonist’s physical features and his/her personality. Describe him/her or surf the web to find a picture resembling his/her characteristics; • the social context where he/she lives: place (country, town, house), family home (parents/single parent, brothers/sisters), other institutions (group home, orphanage, other); • the form of storytelling you choose (interview/ monologue/comic strip/other) and the problems the protagonist is experiencing/has experienced (poverty/discrimination/bullying/crime/other).

AI ACTIVITY

DIGITAL COMPETENCES Write a short report on the chosen topic. Copy and paste your text in an AI chatbot and ask your AI assistant to check it for possible mistakes. Evaluate the AI assistant‘s feedback: was it useful and consistent? Why? / Why not? ▶ Poor Law set out regulations for workhouses, imposing

harsh conditions on inmates so that they were seen as places of last resort. The devil watches as a child is dragged from his mother, while an Angel covers its face unable to meet the mother’s pleading eyes (cartoon from ‘Punch’, London, 1843).

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From Hard Times DT35 Facts, and no fancy

Hard Times (1854) The novel denounced the exploitation of the working classes during the Industrial Revolution. Dickens described the life of former peasants, how they coped in the cities, and how poverty influenced their lives. Their children attended school, where they were educated according to the principles of Utilitarianism. They became like the machines in the mill factories as this doctrine valued everything and everybody on the basis of how useful they were to industry and development and reduced all education to ‘facts’, with no room for creativity.

Characters • Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant, is the schoolmaster at his private school in Coketown; he is a Utilitarian theorist in the way he raises his children Louisa and Tom. He stresses facts over imagination and reason over feelings. • Louisa Gradgrind, Thomas’ daughter and Bounderby’s wife, is totally disconnected from her emotions and alienated as a result of her cold-hearted upbringing. • Thomas Gradgrind Jr, Gradgrind’s eldest son, becomes a dissolute, hedonistic, hypocritical young man as a result of his strict upbringing. • Josiah Bounderby, Gradgrind’s friend and Louisa’s husband, is proud of his being a self-made man.

THE PLOT In Coketown, an imaginary northern industrial city, Thomas Gradgrind is an educator whose motto is ‘Facts, facts, facts‘. His daughter Louisa acts on her father’s principles and marries Josiah Bounderby, the elderly and rich owner of the Coketown factories. Tom, Louisa’s brother, who works for Bounderby, robs him and throws suspicion on an innocent weaver, Stephen Blackpool. To escape an affair with James Harthouse, a heartless politician who loves her, Louisa goes to her father who, shocked by the consequences of his teachings, shelters her. In the end, she is permanently separated from her husband, Tom leaves the country and dies abroad, while Blackpool is shown to be innocent. Gradgrind lives into old age rejecting his ‘Facts and Figures‘ philosophy.

Themes • The tyranny of facts and the death of fancy The Utilitarians considered universal education an essential prerequisite for achieving the greatest happiness. Facts are opposed to fancy – imagination, creativity, pleasure – but when fancy is abolished people become dysfunctional, as shown by Gradgrind’s children as adults. Their education only based on facts has made them incapable of feelings and deepened their misery and depression. This materialistic mentality with no room for anything spiritual, and the tyranny of facts as what is measurable and quantifiable makes people blind to the evidence of given reality, as Dickens ironically illustrates when he presents Mr Gradgrind’s educational theory in practice in his classroom.

◀ Smoke from steel factories in Sheffield, England, 1800s

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Charles Dickens • The loss of humanity

IN ACTION

The novel shows how industrialisation threatens to turn human beings into machines. Degrading working and living conditions, combined with the harmful effect of Utilitarianism, block the development of people’s emotions and imaginations, and turn them into machines only useful as small parts in the production process. Bounderby treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects to be exploited for his own self-interest, and Gradgrind indoctrinates his pupils with facts as he believes that human nature can be measured as if it were a material object. Dickens, instead, alerts his readers to the inhumanity of a life without compassion and creativity.

Look and think

The dirty River Thames

MIND MAP

▲ The satirical magazine ‘Punch’ dedicated several cartoons to the

condition of the River Thames in the 19th century. The Thames became a symbol of water degradation throughout the industrialised world.

Hard Times

exploitation of working classes

1 Answer the questions.

Utilitarianism

facts over fancy

1 How is the river depicted?

loss of humanity

2 What is the condition of the river like? CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

Web quest 2 Search the web to find more cartoons of the time depicting pollution, poor sanitation and diseases and prepare a slide show to present to your class.

1 How have the main characters been influenced by Utilitarianism? 2 What did Dickens criticise in Hard Times? 3 What negative effects of Utilitarianism does he present in the novel?

T42 Coketown 49 Hard Times

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Coketown is a typical 19th-century English manufacturing centre. The word ‘coke’ refers to the treated coal that was used to power the factories, and Coketown is a town of industrial pollution.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. individuality • matters • describes • smoke • machinery

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Coketown, an industrial town full of (2)

The narrator (1) dirt. The noise of the (3) houses have no trace of (4) (5)

and

working in factories never stops and the people and . The only thing that is real – it is a ‘fact’ and therefore

– in Coketown is what can be monetised.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Ideas for your map: POLLUTION/SUSTAINABILITY

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UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What colours are there in Coketown?

2 What characterises people’s lives? 3 What colour(s) are the inscriptions in the town? 4 How similar/different are the streets and public buildings?

It was a town of red brick1, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes2 had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys3, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled4. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye5, and vast piles of buildings6 full 5 of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling7 all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine8 worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, 10 to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart9 of the last and the next. [...] All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail10 might have been the infirmary11, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall12 might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to 15 the contrary in the graces of their construction13. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school14 was all fact, and the school of design15 was all fact, and the relations between master and man16 were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital17 and the cemetery; and what you couldn’t state in figures18, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest 20 market and saleable in the dearest19, was not20, and never should be, world without end21, Amen. (Abridged from Chapter 5)

1 brick: mattoni 2 smoke and ashes: fumo e cenere, effetto della produzione industriale incessante 3 chimneys: ciminiere 4 trailed… uncoiled: strisciavano senza sosta e non si srotolavano mai 5 ran… dye: scorreva arrossato da tinture maleodoranti 6 piles of buildings: blocchi di edifici 7 a rattling and a trembling: tremolante tintinnio

8 steam-engine: macchina a vapore 9 counterpart: copia 10 jail: prigione 11 infirmary: ospedale 12 town-hall: municipio 13 for… construction: in quanto gli abbellimenti di quelle costruzioni non indicavano nulla di diverso 14 M’Choakumchild school: la scuola di M’Choakumchild (il nome significa “l’insegnante che soffoca i bambini”)

15 school of design: scuola di progettazione 16 master and man: padrone e operaio 17 lying-in hospital: clinica per partorienti 18 state in figures: tradurre in cifre 19 show… dearest: non si poteva acquistare a buon mercato e vendere al prezzo più alto 20 was not: non c’era, non esisteva 21 world without end: nei secoli dei secoli

ANALYSE 3 Identify:

a mystery and horror

1 all the typical elements of an industrial town.

b menace, danger and fear

2 the effects of industrial pollution presented through the sense of smell and hearing.

c repetition, force, constriction

4 Decide whether descriptions of the town (1–3) are similes or metaphors and then match them with the connotations (a–c). 1

ll.2–3: ‘like the painted face of a savage’: simile / metaphor

l l.3–4: ‘interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled’: simile / metaphor

l l.7–8: ‘like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness’: simile / metaphor

5 Find the words that summarise the materialistic outlook of Utilitarian philosophy that Dickens attacks. Rephrase their meaning in your own words. INTERPRET 6 Things and people lose their individuality in Coketown. Is this true of modern towns, too? PDF

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The Victorian Age – Authors and works

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ACROSS TIME The nature/nurture debate AND SPACE

◀ Maria

Montessori

AGENDA 2030

Do human beings become human only through education, or do we become human naturally? These questions are part of the nature/nurture debate, which characterised studies in the fields of education and child development until the end of the 20th century. One side is nature-biological-genetic forces (heredity), the other is nurture-external forces (the child’s environment). The supporters of the nurture argument talk about human nature as a blank slate or tabula rasa, that is as something totally ‘written’ by culture, society, parenting and other external forces, and of behaviour as learned. On the other hand, the supporters of the nature argument believe that external forces cannot determine our nature, so our behaviour is innate. Today, rather than as opposites, nature and nurture are usually seen as two sides of the same coin. Maria Montessori (1870–1952) believed that nature interacts with nurture. She was the first woman to graduate as a doctor from the University of Rome and subsequently went on to study paediatrics, psychiatry and psychology. In 1907, she was nominated medical officer for the Casa dei Bambini; she made some revealing discoveries which led her to map out what has now become widely known as the ‘Montessori philosophy’. She believed that children are born with a personality (intrinsic nature) that gradually unfolds. The key to helping a child’s personality and intellect is through provision of an enriched environment characterised by order and structure. A teacher’s role is therefore that of a facilitator or as Montessori termed it, a ‘director’: teachers can direct children in their own learning pathway by preparing the environment and showing them how to use the learning materials.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What were the two opposing ideas concerning education? 2 What is the difference between the idea of tabula rasa and that of innate nature? 2 Choose all the correct statements. a

aria Montessori’s method is the result of her university studies M and her observation of children at the Casa dei Bambini.

S he considered direct observation of the children’s behaviour unimportant.

I n the nature versus nurture debate, Montessori’s position was that the environment controls a child’s development.

child’s intrinsic nature develops fully if there are no rules for A him or her to follow.

good learning environment for children is characterised by A order and structure.

I n the Montessori philosophy, the teacher or ‘director’, is responsible for creating a good learning environment.

PROJECT 3 Engage in a communication campaign focusing on teaching methods. Group A will consider traditional teaching methods, Group B the Montessori’s. Step 1 Gather information on the document/topic/issue that you have been assigned. Step 2 Prepare an action plan which includes objectives, audience, content and campaign materials. Step 3 Present your action plan to the rest of the class with at least one sample of the campaign materials.

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FILMS FOR THOUGHT

A Dickens for all times Like Shakespeare and his plays, Dickens is also often chosen by directors for film adaptations. The lively dialogue, the vivid description of places, the gallery of portraits and the combination of tragic and comic with a touch of sensational and Gothicism are such varied elements that film makers have plenty of room to develop their films along creative lines.

Oliver Twist (2005) The character of Fagin, so crucial to the story, is portrayed with grotesque mannerisms and movements, next to the innocent child Oliver, dragged into the world of criminality. The film director Roman Polanski based his recreation of mid 19th century London on Gustave Doré’s prints of the period for authenticity.

Nicholas Nickleby (2002) In this adaptation by Douglas McGrath, young Nicholas loses his father and looks for help from his uncle Ralph in London, who wants nothing to have to do with the boy and sends him to work in Mr Squeers’ terrible boarding school in Yorkshire. In the end, Nicholas will find happiness with the woman he loves, and all the villains will be punished, although Smike (the boy Nicholas saved from mistreatment in the boarding school and who will be revealed to be his cousin) dies. As is typical of Dickens, the villain is an intimidating character, also thanks to the brilliant performance of the actor.

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The Victorian Age

A Christmas Carol (2009) This adaption of Dickens’ story by Robert Zemeckis shows Mr Scrooge, with his greediness and final transformation after the visits of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The vivid setting that mirrors the personality of the characters and wonderful scenic effects dominate in the ghost scenes.

Great Expectations (2012) The costumes and sets of this adaptation by Mike Newell are both beautiful and evocative, as well as the music. Dark windowless rooms contribute to a claustrophobic atmosphere. Magwitch, the criminal, is portrayed as both a scary and tragic individual, at first frightening but later almost to be pitied.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Search the web for some clips of the adaptations of Dickens’ works. Here are some suggestions: Oliver Twist • The starved children choose the candidate who will have to ask for more food. Oliver loses, and then he walks to Mr Bumble to make the terrible request. • Oliver is introduced to the band of pickpockets and their master, Mr Fagin. Nicholas Nickleby • See what happens on the first day at the boarding school run by unscrupulous Wackford Squeers. A Christmas Carol • The Ghost of Christmas Past appears to Mr Scrooge.

Great Expectations • Pip, now a gentleman, argues with the beautiful Estella about her flirting with men; surprisingly, she claims that she will act as she pleases with all men. All men but him. Compare the scenes that you have watched with what you have read from Dickens’ novels. Do the films create the atmosphere that you had imagined while reading or is it different? WORK CREATIVE 2 Imagine the setting of Pip’s first meeting with Magwitch; think of all the details that can help make it Gothic (light, time of the day, music, dominant colours, sounds) and then compare what you have imagined with the night of the creation of the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus ( p. 227). Is your scene Gothic enough?

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)

LEARNING DIGITAL C harlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre PPT

The Brontë sisters

PDF

• The real Brontë sisters • Jane Eyre: full plot

Profile The three Brontë sisters started writing stories and poems together at a very early age. They published their works under male pen names, and received favourable reviews, but when their identities were revealed they were criticised for their ‘sensuality’. Charlotte’s picture of strong and sensual love, seen from a woman’s point of view, was a shock for many readers of her time but an important innovation especially for future women novelists; for this she can be considered a proto-feminist. Her novels are all autobiographical: her heroines have her same sense of duty and moral integrity, live her same intense passions, claim their right to sex and action and rebel against male authority.

Jane Eyre (1847) ▲ Richard Redgrave, The Governess (1844)

Jane Eyre, first published in 1847 under the pen name of Currer Bell, immediately enjoyed great popularity because of its mixture of realism, romanticism, suspense and melodrama; it was also a shock to many readers, who were unfamiliar with a female first-person narrator talking about the suffering of unreciprocated love so openly, and with a clear understanding of a woman’s needs.

THE PLOT Jane Eyre is an orphan who lives with Mrs Reed, her dead uncle’s wife, and her children. At the age of ten they send her away to Lowood, a school with an inhumane regime. At eighteen, Jane finds a job as governess to Adèle, the ward of Mr Rochester, a wealthy gentleman at Thornfield Hall, in Yorkshire. Rochester plans to marry Miss Ingram but is attracted to Jane, who secretly loves him. He proposes to her and she accepts. On their wedding day, Mr Mason arrives and claims that Rochester already has a wife, a severely mentally ill Jamaican heiress, Bertha Antoinette Mason, who lives confined in the attic of Thornfield Hall. Shocked,

Jane leaves Rochester and obtains shelter with the Rivers family. Jane’s aunt dies and she inherits from her uncle, which puts an end to her days of total poverty. John Rivers, who is leaving for India as a missionary, proposes to her because he needs a virtuous companion for his mission. She is about to accept him when she mysteriously hears Rochester’s voice calling her from afar. She hurries back to Yorkshire; Bertha has burnt down Thornfield Hall, killing herself in the process and Rochester has lost his sight and a hand. Jane looks after him and then marries him; he partly regains his sight and they have a son.

Themes Brontë joins the struggle of women with the fate of the poor, oppressed classes: Jane suffers humiliation because she is poor, and the fact she is a woman makes her even more vulnerable. She reveals the lowly conditions of women at the time and the very few chances that girls had for social improvement; they could only marry, teach, or prostitute themselves. They were deliberately marginalised. Becoming a governess and a teacher was a common situation for women with poor or no means in Victorian fiction, but what makes Jane Eyre different is the personality of the heroine. Jane, so frankly and openly determined to marry Rochester, scandalised Victorian readers. She also openly expresses her will to resist, as she says in the hard years of her childhood at the boarding school in Lowood: ‘When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should – so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again‘. 282

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1816 Charlotte was born in Yorkshire, the eldest of the three famous Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

1821 Her mother died leaving five daughters and a son.

WORKS

1825 Maria and Elizabeth, her elder sisters, died of tuberculosis after attending a boarding school. Consequently Charlotte’s father withdrew her from it.

1832 KEY FACT The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, all studied at home, at Haworth Parsonage, and dedicated themselves to reading, painting and writing.

1839 KEY FACT Charlotte took up the first of many positions as a governess.

1842 KEY FACT In Brussels, she fell in love with Costantin Héger, the headmaster of the boarding school where she was a teacher, but Héger was married and Charlotte’s moral integrity made her love impossible.

1847

Jane Eyre

p. 282

1854 Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls.

1855 She died during pregnancy.

1849

Shirley

IN ACTION Across space and time

A modern Cinderella story? Cinderella is the story of an orphan girl who is unfairly treated by her stepmother and stepsisters, and who lives in obscurity and neglect. Her fairy godmother transforms her into a beautiful princess for the night of the ball and the Prince falls in love with her. Her delicate glass shoe stands for her uniqueness, which makes her recognisable and unique even when he finds her in her dirty old clothes.

▶ Actress Lily James as Cinderella in the 2015 film version of the fable

1 Answer the questions. 1 What Cinderella elements are identifiable in Jane Eyre’s story?

2 Which elements are different?

Language and style Charlotte revealed her own life and passions in the first-person narrator, Jane Eyre herself, the protagonist of the novel. This enables Charlotte to fully explore a woman’s sensitivity. She often uses dialogue, her style is straightforward and characterised by spontaneity and a careful choice of words but her experience as a poet with her sister Anne trained her to choose figures of speech which evoke sensual impressions.

MIND MAP

Charlotte Brontë

autobiographical novel

duty and moral uprightness

intense passions – strong sensual love

Jane Eyre

right to independence in life and love

realism – romanticism – suspense – melodrama

female first-person narrator

condition of women

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why is Charlotte Brontë a proto-feminist?

4 How does she respond to marginalisation?

2 Which traits of her personality are to be found in her characters?

5 What innovation(s) did Charlotte Brontë introduce in her novels?

3 Why is Jane Eyre a victim of oppression?

Ideas for your map: LOVE

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283

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T43 I am a free being 50 Jane Eyre

On a summer evening, Jane is walking in the garden and meets Rochester. He suggests that, after his marriage to Miss Ingram, Jane should go to Ireland, where he has found a place for her as a governess with Mr Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge. 1 Complete the summary with the given words. friends • refuses • kisses • free • choices • long • declares • confesses • forget • dignity • far

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Jane says that the journey to Ireland will be (1) (2)

, but she is not afraid of being

from him. He insists that since they will never meet again they should sit to have a

proper goodbye as good (3)

. Then he provokingly (4)

that if they part, he

will be torn inside, but she will forget him. Jane claims she will never (5) mentions the nightingale, she cries and (6)

her love for Thornfield. However, she can’t stay

because Rochester is going to marry Miss Ingram. She (7) ▲ Scene from the film Million

Dollar Baby by Clint Eastwood (2004).

1 will not object to: non avrà problemi con 2 chestnut tree: castagno 3 ribs: costole 4 knotted: legata 5 boisterous Channel: burrascoso Canale (il Canale di San Giorgio fra l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda) 6 will be snapt (snapped): si strappi 7 stirred: scossa 8 was claiming… sway: reclamava uno sfogo e lottava per avere più controllo 9 trampled on: calpestata

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What past evils of her life hasn’t Jane found in Thornfield? 284

(8)

. Rochester stops teasing her and (9)

(10)

being who can make her own (11)

him; when he since that means losing her

her; she claims her dignity as a .

Now read the extract and check your answers.

“It is a long way off, sir.” “No matter – a girl of your sense will not object to1 the voyage or the distance.” “Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier –” “From what, Jane?” “From England and from Thornfield – and –” 5 “Well?” “From you, sir.” […] “It is a long way,” I again said. “It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again […]. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?” 10 “Yes, sir.” “And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other. Come! […] Here is the chestnut tree2: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.” He seated me and himself. 15 “It is a long way to Ireland, Jane, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: […] I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs3, tightly and inextricably knotted4 to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel5, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of 20 communion will be snapt6; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, – you’d forget me.” “That I never should, sir: you know –” Impossible to proceed. “Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!” In listening, I sobbed convulsively. […] The vehemence of emotion, stirred7 by grief and 25 love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway8, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes, – and to speak. “I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield: – I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, – momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on9. I have not been petrified.

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

Charlotte Brontë 2 What has Jane found there?

10 torn: separata 11 He… teeth: Serrò i denti 12 I swear… kept: Lo giuro e manterrò il giuramento 13 snatched… lips: strappatomi dalle labbra 14 dashed: allontanata 15 rejoined: ripresi 16 sneer at her: deriderla 17 is rending: si strappa 18 no net… me: nessuna rete mi intrappola

3 Does Jane accept Rochester’s embrace? 4 Does Jane consider herself inferior to Rochester?

I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion 30 with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in, – with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn10 from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.” “Where do you see the necessity?” he asked suddenly. 35 “Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.” “In what shape?” “In the shape of Miss Ingram – a noble and beautiful woman – your bride.” “My bride! What bride? I have no bride!” “But you will have.” 40 11 “Yes; – I will! – I will!” He set his teeth . “Then I must go: – you have said it yourself.” “No: you must stay! I swear it – and the oath shall be kept12.” “I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings? 45 and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips13, and my drop of living water dashed14 from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart! […] I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; – it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and 50 we stood at God’s feet, equal, – as we are!” “As we are!” repeated Mr. Rochester – “so,” he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so, Jane!” “Yes, so, sir,” I rejoined15! “and yet not so; for you are a married man – or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you – to one with whom you have no sympathy – 55 whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her16. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you – let me go!” “Where, Jane? To Ireland?” “Yes – to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.” “Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending17 its own plumage in 60 its desperation.” “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me18; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.” (Abridged from Chapter 23)

ANALYSE 3 Focus on Rochester’s words. Choose all the correct statements. 1

Rochester knows that Jane is an emotional creature who will fall into his arms as soon as he mentions their separation.

e talks about his closeness to Jane under the veil of friendship to H make her confess her feelings.

He is convinced that Jane will not remember him once she has left.

Jane says that she can’t stay as he is going to marry, and he swears that Jane won’t leave.

e understands Jane’s declaration of equality as an implicit H declaration of love and embraces her.

4 Is she aware that her words are unacceptable for a woman of her position in Victorian society? INTERPRET 5 Compare the escalation of passion in this passage to the exchange between Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare in the balcony scene ( p. 90); is Jane stronger or weaker than Juliet? DEBATE 6 Debate the statement in groups.

4 Focus on Jane’s words and answer the questions.

Today’s women have obtained full equality with men.

1 What is love associated with for Jane? 2 What would she become if she accepted to stay with Rochester?

Group A claim that women in today’s world have the same opportunities of men.

3 What kind of personality does she show?

Group B claim that their opportunities are much more limited than men’s. PDF

Your text explained

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285

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

Emily Brontë (1818–1848)

LEARNING DIGITAL

PPT PDF

E mily Brontë and Wuthering Heights The Brontë sisters Wuthering Heights: full plot

Profile Not much is known about Emily’s personality as she was a reclusive and shy woman, more comfortable with wild animals on the moors than with people, and much of what is known came from Charlotte’s description of her sister. Like her sisters, she studied at home at Haworth Parsonage and her occupations were reading, painting and writing. A visionary novelist, Emily saw human beings in relation to the cosmic scheme of which they are a part. She was convinced that the world of the living and the world of those who have become spiritual entities with their death can be connected. Her novel Wuthering Heights is a unique masterpiece, characterised by mystic Romanticism, in which human nature and a transcendental world where spirits live after death are united.

▲ Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë,

by their brother Branwell (c. 1834). He painted himself among his sisters, but later removed the image.

Wuthering Heights (1847) Wuthering Heights was highly innovative in structure; the narrative abandons chronological narration, and moves backwards and forwards in time through memories and flashbacks. The story stretches over two generations, linked together only by the presence of Heathcliff. The title of the book, Wuthering Heights, suggests the atmosphere of the novel, wild and elemental. The setting is the rough Yorkshire moorland whose weather is as stormy as the passions of the characters.

THE PLOT The novel does not follow a chronological order and covers two generations; it is narrated by Mr Lockwood, a tenant at Thrushcross Grange, one of the two locations in the novel, and a stranger to the place, who starts and concludes the story, and by Nelly Dean, a minor character and the housekeeper there. The elderly housekeeper recounts the events of two generations to Mr Lockwood after he has paid a visit to Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights, a mansion on the Yorkshire Moors and the other main location in the novel. During the visit, Mr Lockwood sees the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, which has been wandering on the moors for the last twenty years, and Heathcliff rushes into the room to see her. This is where the novel actually begins. Mr Lockwood will learn the rest of the story on a second visit to Wuthering Heights the following autumn, after Heathcliff’s death: Mr Earnshaw, the master of Wuthering Heights, takes Heathcliff, an orphan gypsy, to his home to be raised with his own children, Catherine and Hindley. Both Heathcliff and Catherine have intense, passionate natures and fall in love, but when Heathcliff overhears her saying that a marriage with him would not be appropriate for a woman of her status, he leaves. On his return three years later, Catherine 286

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

is married to Edgar Linton, the master of nearby Thrushcross Grange and a respectable member of the gentry. Out of his desire for revenge, Heathcliff marries Edgar’s sister, Isabella, though he does not love her. Shortly afterwards, Catherine dies giving birth to a daughter, Cathy, and Heathcliff’s wife Isabella gives birth to a sickly son, Linton. Hindley has become an alcoholic and has lost all his money, so Heathcliff is free to complete his revenge and buys Wuthering Heights. He forces his son, Linton, to marry young Cathy, but Linton soon dies, shortly followed by Heathcliff, who is finally united in death with his Catherine. Cathy, who was in love with Hindley’s son, Hareton, is now free to marry him. The two distinct generations involved in the novel: Mr and Mrs Earnshaw Frances + Hindley (Heathcliff) Hareton

Mr and Mrs Linton

Catherine + Edgar Isabella + Heathcliff Cathy

Linton

LIFE 1818 Emily was born two years after her sister Charlotte, the author of Jane Eyre.

1821 Her mother died leaving five daughters and a son.

WORKS

1824 She studied at a school for a short period but when two of her sisters died her father withdrew Emily and Charlotte from it.

1835 She briefly attended the school where Charlotte taught, but she was too homesick, and was withdrawn. Her project to run a school with Charlotte failed.

1837 KEY FACT Together with Anne and Charlotte, she wrote poems depicting their fantasy world, Gondal.

1846 KEY FACT The three sisters’ poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, three male pseudonyms.

1846

Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell

1848 She had always had rather weak health and died of tuberculosis.

1847

Wuthering Heights p. 286

The characters’ names

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Search the web to look up ‘wuthering’. What may it stand for? English in action 2 Write the adjective from the noun/verb. 1 bias

2 to vindicate 3 ego 4 gloom

Look and think

The characters’ names are carefully chosen so as to repeat themselves from generation to generation: Catherine with Cathy and Heathcliff with Hareton. This suggests both continuity (in the similar names and in the pairing of lovers) and discontinuity, as the ‘second generation’ follows a totally different path from that of the first. Neither of the protagonists, Catherine and Heathcliff, fits the description of the ‘good hero/heroine’; they are both amoral beings, totally determined by their own instinctive natures, who know no other law but the will and tyranny of their desires. They identify with each other in their strangely asexual love; Heathcliff sees Catherine as his soul and Catherine declares ‘I am Heathcliff. He is more myself than I am‘. His name ‘heath-cliff’ (moor and rock) identifies him with the moors, which is the only place in the world where Catherine desires to be.

The narrators The novel has multiple narrators: Nelly, Mr Lockwood, and other characters such as Heathcliff, Isabella and Cathy, who narrate individual chapters. Through her diary, Catherine reveals the world of the childhood that she shared with Heathcliff on the moors. The combination of various voices enriches the novel from the psychological point of view, making the story more intriguing, but also adds to its ambiguity, i.e. the presence of multiple meanings. The characters’ motivations and behaviours are explored from various perspectives, most of the time deliberately contradictory. Neither Mr Lockwood nor Nelly, the two first-person narrators, are reliable; he is the most educated character in the novel, but his judgement is generally poor. Nelly is clearly biased by her involvement with the characters’ complex relationships. Moreover, she often changes her mind and attitude. She supports Catherine, then betrays her trust by informing Edgar of Heathcliff’s visits to Thrushcross Grange, and she also fails to inform Mr Linton of his wife’s deteriorating health. Her continuous betrayals may lead the reader to consider her view of Heathcliff as just a vindictive being, or of Catherine as egocentric. The fact that Lockwood qualifies her as a reliable narrator is thrown into doubt by Lockwood’s own unreliability as a narrator. The final effect is a complicated narrative where personalities are obscured rather than revealed, multifaceted rather than linear.

The Gothic spirit of the novel The novel presents some of the codified elements of Gothicism ( p. 182). ▲ Stormy Clouds over the North York Moors National Park

3 Look at the picture of the Yorkshire Moors today. Try and imagine a stormy day in it, with yourself back in the 19th century, walking across the moors. How would you feel?

• It is set in an isolated gloomy, old manor house that is located on the stormy Yorkshire Moors, and Heathcliff is the perfect Gothic villain: dark, sinister, handsome and mysterious, capable of extreme love and hate, and the cause of the death of the woman he loves. • Another element is the supernatural; nightmarish dreams, the country folk’s belief in ghosts, superstitions and prophecies are found throughout the novel. The world of the living and of the dead interact continuously. Heathcliff and Catherine’s love, which is never physical but rather a pure union of souls, is not confined to this world; they are united only in death as spiritual entities, finally able to overcome the obstacles that their own personalities and their status had set for their union on Earth. 287

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

Themes • Destructive vs constructive love Catherine and Heathcliff’s destructive passion for each other goes beyond social norms and traditional morality, and the author neither condemns nor approves it clearly, though Nelly, the housekeeper of Thrushcross Grange and the narrator of their love to Mr Lockwood, condemns their love as immoral. In their obsession they are unable to change. In choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine looks for status and wealth, but she keeps longing for her lost childhood on the moors and is unable to grow and change. The same attitude marks Heathcliff’s personality and life; he lives only to take his revenge. The arrival of a new generation as represented by Cathy and Hareton solves the apparently irreconcilable conflict between the two worlds represented by Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The developing love of Cathy and Hareton ends happily; their union restores peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

• Class status Both the Earnshaws and the Lintons belong to the gentry, and they possess estates, servants and wealth. Catherine chooses to marry Edgar, not out of love, but out of interest; he is the best choice to allow her to become the most important woman in the area, while Heathcliff, a lost child and a gentleman only by adoption, is not an appropriate choice. MIND MAP

Emily Brontë

visionary novelist

mystic Romanticism transcendental world

Wuthering Heights

innovative structure memories – flashbacks

Gothicism

destructive vs constructive love

class status

union of the living and the dead

Catherine vs Heathcliff multiple narrators

▶ Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 film adaptation of the novel

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How much do we know about Emily Brontë as a person? 2 What vision of life emerges from her works? 3 What are the main innovations of the novel? 4 What elements in the novel are Gothic? 5 What two views of love are presented in the novel? 6 What class do the characters of the novel belong to? 288

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: LOVE

p. 331

Emily Brontë

T44 I am Heathcliff 51 Wuthering Heights

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Nelly, the first-person narrator, is telling Mr Lockwood about a conversation she had with Catherine in which Catherine explained what Heathcliff meant to her although she had decided to marry Linton. 1 Complete the summary with the given words. listens • dream • disapproves • joy • marry • cried

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Catherine tells Nell about a (1)

that she had; she was in heaven but she (2)

so much that the angels threw her out back to Wuthering Heights. She woke up sobbing with (3)

. She explains why she will (4)

Linton and not Heathcliff and with

intense words she reveals the intensity of her feelings for Heathcliff. Nell (5) ▲ Scene from the 2009 film adaptation of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Who do ‘she’ and ‘me’ refer to?

2 Who is the ‘wicked man’? 3 Why will Catherine not marry Heathcliff?

1 She seated... again: (Catherine) Mi si sedette di nuovo accanto 2 clasped: strette l’una all’altra 3 queer: strani 4 fit: degna 5 harken to: ascoltare 6 heath: brughiera

she strongly (6)

to her, but

of Catherine’s words. They are just folly to her.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

She seated herself by me again1: her countenance grew sadder and graver, and her clasped2 hands trembled. ‘Nelly, do you never dream queer3 dreams?’ she said, suddenly, after some minutes’ reflection. ‘Yes, now and then,’ I answered. ‘And so do I. I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed 5 my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one – I’m going to tell it – but take care not to smile at any part of it.’ [...] ‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’ ‘Because you are not fit4 to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’ 10 ‘But it is not for that. I dreamt, once, that I was there.’ ‘I tell you I won’t harken to5 your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed,’ I interrupted again. She laughed, and held me down, for I made a motion to leave my chair. ‘This is nothing,’ cried she; ‘I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; 15 and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath6 on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing7 for joy. That will do8 to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven9; and if the wicked man in there10 had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry 20 Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.’ [...] ‘Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo11! Not as long as I live, Ellen – for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing12, before 25 7 sobbing: singhiozzando 8 That will do: Questo basterà 9 I’ve no more business... heaven: Non fa per me sposare Edgar Linton come non fa per me stare in cielo 10 if… there: se quel malvagio che

ora è rinchiuso lassù (allude al fratello Hindley, che ha sempre odiato e perseguitato Heathcliff) 11 They’ll meet... Milo: Essi avranno lo stesso destino di Milo (Milo era un atleta di Crotone. Divenuto vecchio,

mentre cercava di abbattere un albero, vi rimase impigliato con una mano, e fu sbranato da un branco di animali selvaggi) 12 Every... nothing: tutti i Linton sulla faccia della terra possono dileguarsi nel nulla

289

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

4 Will she be fond of Linton forever?

13 I jerked... away: io gliela strappai via con forza

I could consent to forsake Heathcliff! Oh, that’s not what I intend – that’s not what I mean! I shouldn’t be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He’ll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. [...] I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and 30 I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods.Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little 35 visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being – so, don’t talk of our separation again – it is impracticable; and –’ She paused, and hid her face in the folds of my gown; but I jerked it forcibly away13. I was 40 out of patience with her folly! (Abridged from Chapter 9)

ANALYSE

4 Conventional morality is represented by Nelly’s comments. How important does her morality appear in the extract?

3 Answer the questions. 1 How changeable but also strong are Catherine’s feelings? 2 The Catherine-Heathcliff identity is at the very heart of the novel. How does Catherine describe it? 3 What areas does Catherine draw from to metaphorically describe her feelings for Linton and Heathcliff?

INTERPRET 4 Catherine’s awareness of her soul as being one with Heathcliff’s contrasts with her decision to marry someone else. Have you ever met anyone capable of such contradictory but also fascinating attitudes? PDF

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Black Spring (2013) by Alison Croggon Alison Croggon is an award-winning poet, critic, playwright and novelist, whose family moved from South Africa to England and then Australia. She is most famous for her ‘Pellinor’ fantasy series, including a prequel and four books, but she also collaborates with contemporary composers contributing her libretti to their operas. Her novel Black Spring reimagines Emily Brontë’s work, setting it in a gothic, magical world which adds greatly to the unsettling atmosphere of the Romantic masterpiece.

A fiercely romantic tale of betrayal and vengeance Built on the original Chinese box structure of Wuthering Heights, Black Spring tells about Lina, the charming, determined daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood mate, Damek, have grown up together to create a unique, almost supernatural bond. As a witch, Lina is only tolerated in her patriarchal society thanks to her rank, but her forbidden power is eventually unleashed, causing devastation, revenge and tragedy.

“

ina and Damek would disappear for hours on end, L returning with their clothes torn and filthy with mud and their eyes shining with secret mischief.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Amanda’s review of the book and discuss the following statements saying if you agree or disagree. • I dislike most of the books people recommend reading. • Contemporary novelists who use plots and characters from classic masterpieces to write retellings aimed at young readers have no imagination or talent of their own. • Young readers don’t find classic books interesting because they find it hard to understand the language used in them. 290

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

ACROSS TIME Emily’s unique gift AND SPACE Virginia Woolf, an incredibly talented female novelist of the early 20 century ( p. 366), saw th

what others had not seen yet; the female sensibility and unique gift of Emily’s art, so similar to her own. She also saw the lack of real understanding and consideration that the world of arts had for talented women.

▲ Virginia Woolf

1 Il riferimento è a Jane Eyre come governante e a Rochester come suo datore di lavoro in Jane Eyre ( p. 282).

Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre, because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote, she said with eloquence and splendour and passion “I love”, “I hate”, “I suffer”. Her experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there is no “I” in Wuthering Heights. There are no governesses. There are no employers1. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel — a struggle, half thwarted but of superb conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters, which is not merely “I love” or “I hate”, but “we, the whole human race” and “you, the eternal powers...” the sentence remains unfinished. It is not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, “If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem part of it”. It breaks out again in the presence of the dead. “I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter — the eternity they have entered — where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy and joy in its fulness.” It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of comparing Wuthering Heights with a real farm and Heathcliff with a real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has a more vivid existence than his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar. (From Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as published in The Common Reader, 1925)

CHECK OUT

DEBATE

1 Answer the questions.

2 Debate the statement in groups.

1 How different is Charlotte’s presentation of love from Emily’s?

Men still dominate the world of the arts.

2 Does Woolf describe Emily’s presentation of life on the farm, or Heathcliff’s personality as unreal, or real?

Group A believe that the dominance of men is still absolute in the world of the arts.

3 Emily’s characters are real, but Woolf claims she adds something to them. What does she add?

Group B believe that women have gained their own place in the world of the arts.

291

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

George Eliot (1819–1880)

LEARNING DIGITAL G eorge Eliot and Middlemarch PDF

• Unconventional George Eliot • Middlemarch: full plot

IN ACTION Web quest/Discuss 1 David Strauss presented the Gospels as either a myth or the creation of the first Christian community, and Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that God was nothing but a projection of human nature. Search the web to learn more about Strauss’ and Feuerbach’s works and their presentation of present Christianity as entirely the product of man. Discuss how this point may have undermined George Eliot’s religiosity as a young woman.

Profile George Eliot’s views were unconventional and she maintained them with great determination. Her tenacity made her a first-class intellectual in the circle of radical avantgarde thinkers in London. Higher education for women was still far away in time, but her translation of works of liberal theology and her activity as an editor contributed to grant her intellectual independence. Among others she translated David Friedrich Strauss’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846) and Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1854), two books central to the rejection of Christianity by the intellectual avant-garde. As an editor, she wrote articles supporting gradual reforms in England. Her novels are characterised by deep psychological study and realistic descriptions of English rural life, but their real heart lies in their moral debate: the conflict between ‘passion and duty’, the importance of renunciation of one’s desires in the name of some higher principle, and, above all, the importance of sympathy as the very basis of human interaction. Adam Bede, her first long novel, brought extremely detailed truthful observation of ordinary life to English fiction, combined with deep human sympathy and rigorous moral judgment. Every class is depicted in Middlemarch, from the landed gentry and the clergy to manufacturers and professional men, shopkeepers, farmers and workers.

Middlemarch (1871–72) Published serially from December 1871 to December 1872, the novel is set in the provincial town of Middlemarch (a fictional name for Coventry) at the time when the First Reform Bill was passed (1832). The novel is made up of two interwoven plots as it was originally created as two separate stories, and they develop at the same time. It is a faithful description of a provincial community where the characters’ moral history, rather than class and wealth, influences people’s lives.

THE PLOT Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic girl, and her practical sister Celia are orphans and live with their uncle, Mr Brooke, at Tipton Grange near Middlemarch. Sir James Chettam, a young neighbour, courts Dorothea, but she marries Reverend Edward Casaubon, a pedantic and emotionally sterile clergyman thirty years her senior. Meanwhile, Chettam falls in love with Celia and marries her. While in Rome for her honeymoon, Dorothea meets Will Ladislaw, a charming, half-Polish, bohemian relative of Casaubon’s. They feel mutually attracted. Casaubon dies leaving his fortune to Dorothea but a codicil in his will forbids her from marrying Will. Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor, is attracted to Rosamond Vincy, the daughter of the Mayor of Middlemarch, and marries her. She is very superficial and spends too much money so they soon get into financial difficulties. Their union is miserable as they are too different. Dorothea, now a wealthy widow, gives Tertius money to free him from his debts. With time, Dorothea’s love for Will becomes even stronger and she decides to give up her fortune and marry him. 292

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1819 Mary Ann Evans (the real name of George Eliot) was born and grew up in Warwickshire.

WORKS

1828–32 She was influenced by the evangelical piety of Mrs Maria Lewis, the principal governess at Wallington’s School, a boarding school.

1841 KEY FACT She moved to Coventry, where she met many radical thinkers who led her to give up her Christian faith.

1851 She met Thomas Carlyle and John Chapman, editor of the ‘The Westminster Review‘, and moved to London.

1851–54 KEY FACT She worked as assistant editor at ‘The Review‘. After meeting George Lewes, a philosopher and man of letters, she lived with him although he was a married man.

1857

Amos Barton

1859

Adam Bede

1860

The Mill on the Floss

1861

Silas Marner

1878 Lewes died and she stopped writing. She edited his unfinished works with the help of an old friend, John Walter Cross.

1880 Aged 61, she married Cross, aged 40, but she died the same year.

1871–72

Middlemarch p. 292

Themes • Women and their condition The provincial world depicted in the novel codified women’s role in restrictive terms, and George Eliot offers no easy happy ending because of the lack of options for women. Dorothea Brooke, the protagonist, dreams of an intense and meaningful life but she suppresses her own desires when they do not conform to society’s standards, even when it is a matter of the innocent love of horseriding. She becomes confused and alienated from herself; she marries the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, a scholar working on an ambitious project on religious history, and chooses a marriage that everyone predicts will be a failure in the illusion she will have a grand life through her husband. Conforming to society’s expectations and gender roles starves her own real personality. With her second marriage to Will Ladislaw, she chooses a path that brings her some happiness and satisfaction, but some of her dreams, such as building a colony for tenant farmers so as to improve their lives, remain unrealised.

• The critique of marriage Middlemarch offers a clear critique of the view of marriage as romantic and unproblematic. Both Dorothea’s and Lydgate’s unions are failures; she marries an older man and is soon disillusioned with him and their relationship, while Lydgate’s marriage fails because his wife and he have irreconcilable personalities.

• Social expectations vs individual happiness The individuals who respect and follow social expectations avoid criticism and public condemnation but their lives are miserable. It is only when they act against the rules of society that they achieve happiness. Dorothea’s decision to act against the rules of society allows her to emerge in the end as the most respectable character.

Style Eliot believed in the moral vocation of art and in realism. She is attentive to the external details of the world and also includes representations of the consciousness of the characters. Her novels explore the complicated ways of the mind, the natural, psychological, and social impediments to knowing or speaking the truth. MIND MAP

George Eliot

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

intellectual independence

realism – rural life

provincial community

sympathy for human beings

condition of women Dorothea: selfalienation and illusion

marriage

Middlemarch

moral vocation of art

social expectations vs individual happiness

1 What traits are most significant in George Eliot’s personality and activity? 2 What are the themes of Middlemarch? 3 What characterises Eliot’s realism?

293

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T45 Disillusionment 52 Middlemarch

Dorothea is upset because of the changes that have just taken place in her life: her marriage and then the stay in Rome, a place foreign to her. Her husband goes back to his studies in the Vatican though they are on a honeymoon, and she remains alone.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. studies • depressed • clear • honeymoon

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Dorothea is seated in a nice apartment in Via Sistina, Rome. She is on her (1) alone because her husband has gone to the Vatican for his (2) feels very (3)

but she is . She starts sobbing and

as she considers her husband, her marriage and her dreams about both. Her

thoughts are not (4)

in her mind but she feels disillusioned.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Does Dorothea know exactly why she feels so low?

2 What view does she have of her husband Mr Casaubon? 3 How does Dorothea perceive Rome?

Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir1 of a handsome2 apartment in the Via Sistina. I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly3, with such abandonment to this relief4 of an oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlled by pride on her own account5 and thoughtfulness6 for others will sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone. And 5 Mr Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at the Vatican. Yet Dorothea had no distinctly shapen grievance7 that she could state even to herself; and in the midst of her confused thought and passion, the mental act that was struggling forth into clearness8 was a self-accusing cry that her feeling of desolation was the fault of her own spiritual poverty. She had married the man of her choice, and with the advantage over most girls that she 10 had contemplated her marriage chiefly as the beginning of new duties: from the very first she had thought of Mr Casaubon as having a mind so much above her own9, that he must often be claimed by10 studies which she could not entirely share11; moreover, after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was beholding12 Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange 15 ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar13. […] However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the cause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I have already used: to have been driven14 to be more particular would have been like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows15; for that new real future which was replacing the imaginary drew16 its material from the endless minutiæ by which her view 20 of Mr Casaubon and her wifely relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watch-hand17 from what it had been in her maiden dream18. It was too early yet for her fully to recognise or at least admit the change, still more 1 boudoir: salottino, spogliatoio 2 handsome: elegante 3 she… bitterly: singhiozzava amaramente 4 relief: sollievo 5 on… account: a livello personale 6 thoughtfulness: sollecitudine 7 no… grievance: nessuna ben precisa causa di malcontento

294

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

8 that… clearness: che si andava faticosamente chiarendo 9 so much… own: così superiore alla sua 10 claimed by: impegnato in 11 share: condividere 12 she was beholding: stava visitando

13 trophies… afar: trofei del passato 14 to… driven: essere stata indotta 15 lights and shadows: luci ed ombre 16 drew: traeva 17 watch-hand: lancetta d’orologio 18 maiden dream: sogno di fanciulla

Ideas for your map: MARRIAGE/WOMEN EMANCIPATION

p. 331

George Eliot

4 Who is commenting upon the situation?

for her to have readjusted that devotedness19 which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. […] The fact is unalterable20, that 25 a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely21 through the brief entrances and exits22 of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is felt23 if we had no kindred24 changes to compare with it. To 30 share lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities. Still, such comparisons might mislead25, for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe26 than Mr Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively 35 assisted27 in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling28 depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air29 which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by ante-rooms and winding passages30 which seemed to lead nowhither31? (Abridged from Book 2, Chapter 20) 19 devotedness: devozione 20 The… unalterable: È un dato di fatto 21 you… solely: si conosce solamente 22 entrances and exits: incontri 23 felt: percepito

24 kindred: analoghi 25 mislead: fuorviare 26 incapable… make-believe: incapace di una ostentata finzione 27 assisted: contribuito 28 stifling: soffocante

29 the large… air: le ampie vedute e le boccate di aria fresca (cioè, idee nuove) 30 ante-rooms… passages: anticamere e corridoi tortuosi 31 nowhither: da nessuna parte

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What opinion does Dorothea have of herself? 2 Has she changed her view of marriage as something one has to be loyal to? 3 What kind of narrator is present in the extract? 4 How does the narrator use comment? Choose the correct option. a

t o justify Dorothea’s weakness as the result of her husband’s falsity prior to marriage

b to explain why disillusionment comes up in marriage c to dismiss marriage as a harmful institution to be abolished 5 What happens between courtship and marriage in the narrator’s words? 6 How is figurative language used in the extract? INTERPRET 4 What gender stereotype is presented through Dorothea? DEBATE 5 Debate the statement in groups.

It is better not to have any expectations rather than experience bitter disillusion. Group A believe that expectations should never be too high to avoid being disillusioned. Group B believe that disillusion is part of experience and should not prevent a person from having great expectations. ▲ A scene from the 1994 TV mini series adaptation of the novel PDF

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295

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL R obert Louis Stevenson and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde PPT

Robert Louis Stevenson

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: full plot

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From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde DT36 Why do I loathe Hyde so much?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

Profile Stevenson was a rebel at heart; as a university student he smoked hashish and occasionally went to brothels, as many ’respectable‘ Victorians did. He rejected the pessimism and the hypocrisies of Calvinism, preferring a bohemian lifestyle in France, marrying an American divorcee ten years his senior and travelling to exotic places. His works gained him enormous popularity in his lifetime. His name is mainly associated with his major works, Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he explored many genres: essays, travel writing, short stories and novels, as well as poetry and plays. His short stories are often characterised by the supernatural and a macabre atmosphere recalling Edgar Allan Poe ( p. 232) and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He was deeply aware of the moral pressures of Victorian society, and this contrast is at the heart of his vision of man as a dual being. His adventure stories also have subtle moral meanings: with Long John Silver, who is simultaneously a courageous friend and a treacherous murderer in Treasure Island, and Dr Jekyll, the protagonist of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stevenson created ambiguous enigmatic characters. Moving between romance and irony, he managed to combine horror and suspense with moral diagnosis.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) Stevenson claimed that the novel had been inspired by a nightmare that he had one night, in which he saw a man, in a laboratory, swallow a drug and turn into a different being. The novel is a metaphor of the moral duplicity of man, combined with elements of horror and the detective story. It centres on the mystery of a violent, ugly man, Hyde, and his relationship with a respectable doctor, Dr Jekyll. Their natures and relationship have become a modern myth with other similar ‘dark heroes’, such as the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ( p. 224). The novel was extremely successful and was given various interpretations in the Victorian Age; given Jekyll’s death and final confession, priests from the pulpit read the book as an allegory about the necessity of respecting moral rules, but others saw the novel as a radically new, modern and dynamic conception of the self beyond simplistic moral divides that sees some people as good and others as bad. For Stevenson, evil lives in everyone. ◀ A theatre representation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1850 KEY FACT Stevenson was born in Edinburgh into a wealthy Protestant Calvinist family. He was a sickly boy and eventually developed tuberculosis.

1867 He attended university and graduated in law to please his parents, but never practised.

1872 He declared himself an agnostic and chose the career of a writer.

1876 He met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, a divorced American woman. They fell in love and married four years later.

1888 In search of milder climates for his poor health he sailed for the South Pacific and visited the Marquesas, Tahiti, Australia and the Samoan Islands.

1886

Kidnapped

1883

WORKS

IN ACTION Look and think

In your double is your end

Treasure Island

1886

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde p. 296

1890 KEY FACT He established himself at Vailima, his house in Samoa. He defended the natives, who called him Tusitala (‘Teller of Tales’), against colonial exploitation.

1894 He died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

1889

The Master of Ballantrae

THE PLOT Dr Henry Jekyll is a kind, highly respected London doctor. One night Hyde, a mysterious deformed creature, injures a girl and Utterson, a lawyer and Dr Jekyll’s friend, is shocked to learn that Hyde is also Jekyll’s friend. A year later, a gentleman, Sir Danvers Carew, is murdered by Hyde, who then goes missing. Jekyll is deeply affected by this and refuses to speak to anybody. Utterson is concerned about Jekyll and speaks to a mutual friend, Dr Lanyon, a rival scientist who has often argued with Jekyll about the nature of the doctor’s experiments and theories. Lanyon refuses to speak about Jekyll and gives Utterson a letter that must only be opened on the disappearance or death of Jekyll. In the middle of the night, Utterson is called to Jekyll’s house, where he finds the doctor dead. At home, Utterson reads both Dr Lanyon’s letter, which tells him the true nature of Jekyll’s experiments, and Jekyll’s own letter, a confession which reveals the true identity of Mr Hyde. Hyde is Jekyll himself. To prove his theory that man could have two physical states corresponding to two personalities, Jekyll invented a drug that changed him into Hyde. Gradually, however, his better nature weakened, and one day he suddenly turned into Hyde without the use of the drug. Realising that he would soon be losing any control over Hyde, Jekyll poisoned himself.

Genre

▲ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How They Met Themselves (1864)

The painting represents the traditional belief that seeing your double is an omen of death in typical Pre-Raphaelite style ( p. 265). 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who does the couple in medieval dress encounter? 2 How do they react to the odd encounter? 3 Compare this painting to others of the Pre-Raphaelite school, also from the web. Which recurring elements can you identify? 4 Is Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s work a good representation of Jekyll/Hyde’s identity?

Stevenson combined several genres in the novel. • It is a detective story; the title presents the reader with a ‘case’, even if ‘strange’, and Mr Utterson acts as an ‘investigator’ into the central mystery of the story – how someone like Hyde can be Jekyll’s friend and his only heir in the event of the doctor’s death. Utterson is rather passive in his role, and this psychological trait is structurally important as it leaves the mystery totally unsolved until Jekyll’s death and the revelation of his long letter in the last chapter of the novel. • The novel is also Gothic with its conventions of a dark, gloomy atmosphere and a typical labyrinthine setting represented by the streets of London. The cityscape, with the respectable West End and the slums of the East End, is actually modelled on Stevenson’s hometown, Edinburgh, a ‘double town’, divided into an old, medieval town full of narrow streets and dark passages, and a new town, with large streets and respectable big white buildings. Similarly, the entrance to Jekyll’s house is double; one ‘respectable’, the one everybody associates with Jekyll, and the back door, ‘obscure’ in the dark, that Hyde uses. • The novel can be also classified as a horror story because Hyde’s character and his wicked actions introduce horror and terror; Hyde’s presence causes inexplicable disgust even in the most insensitive men.

Themes • The double or Doppelgänger The main theme of the novel is the dual nature of man, or the Doppelgänger. Jekyll changes into Hyde, his other self, a distinct and separate being, who is at first dependent on the original. At the beginning, the transformation takes place through the potion, and then spontaneously, one more piece of evidence that Hyde is ‘hidden’ in Jekyll. The duplicity is the essence of the Jekyll/ Hyde relationship and it is also presented symbolically in the setting. 297

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel IN ACTION English in action 2 Find the opposites of the words. 1 solved

• Evil Jekyll only appears to be a moral and decent doctor, engaging in charity work and enjoying a reputation as a kind and genial man. By his own admission in his long confession, duplicity has always ruled his life and his conscience. He undertakes his experiments with the intent of purifying his good side from his bad, but he only manages to free his darker side from the bonds of conscience and to make it first separate and then dominant. This reveals that evil is dormant in each of us until something releases it. Jekyll hid his dark nature and the potion set it free in Hyde.

• The fear of devolution

2 sensitive

If man was the result of evolution from an inferior species, as claimed in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), then man – Hyde – could devolve into an inferior being. The author evokes Darwin’s theory of the evolution of man from apes in the language used to describe the character of Mr Hyde, in phrases such as, ‘With ape-like fury‘ and ‘Like a monkey, jumped ... .‘ He has a sub-human appearance which ‘gave an impression of a deformity‘ and Utterson himself calls Hyde a troglodyte. Hyde’s progressive dominance of Jekyll may imply that Hyde is actually the original nature of man; civilisation, conscience and societal norms have repressed but not destroyed it. The dark, instinctual side of man never truly disappears.

3 good 4 independent 5 evolved

Symbolism Stevenson rejected pure realism and filled his narrative with symbolic meaning that amplifies the theme of duality. Dr Jekyll is tall, erect and virtuous, while Mr Hyde is short, deformed and violent. London is double, too, on the model of Stevenson’s Edinburgh, and its darker side is a labyrinth where most events take place at night, or in the shadows, or in thick fog, in short in ‘obscurity’. The front of Jekyll’s house is typically Victorian and respectable, with a front door known to everybody, while the back is a dirty two-storey building, without windows, with a back door which represents an opening onto the unconscious, onto hell, onto what is different from the normally accepted social values.

The narrator The novel presents multiple narrators. • The narrator who tells most of the story is non-omniscient and in the third person, and this keeps the mystery unsolved until the end. • The two other narrators are Dr Lanyon and Dr Jekyll; each narrates one chapter of the novel via a confessional letter. Dr Lanyon’s letter reveals that he broke off his friendship with Jekyll because he disapproved of Jekyll’s experiments, while Jekyll’s confession takes up the last chapter, Dr Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case. It solves the mystery of the case and reveals the identity of Jekyll/Hyde. • The focalisation is mostly through Utterson’s eyes, one more aspect that contributes to the mystery and makes Jekyll’s final revelation even more unexpected and shocking. MIND MAP

rebel and bohemian

man as a dual being

Robert Louis Stevenson

horror – suspense

moral diagnosis

the double or Doppelgänger

detective/ horror story

good/evil 298

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Gothic conventions

devolution

symbolism

multiple narrators

subhuman Hyde

Ideas for your map: THE DOUBLE

p. 331

Robert Louis Stevenson CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What was Stevenson’s view of the Victorian Age? 2 What genres can be identified in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

FIRST

2 READ the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Jekyll or Hyde? Overhear ‘he’s a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character’ and you (0) will know exactly (1)

they

3 What is the main theme of the novel?

mean – that this person has two polarised sides (2)

4 Which two other themes can you identify?

could choose him. The other is dark, sinister, absolutely evil and the complete nemesis of his counterpart

5 What kind of style and what narrator characterise the novel?

upright and decent – the sort of person you (3)

his character. One of them is good, be happy to have as a son-in-law if you

in the same tortured body. It is a tale that (5)

but (4) characters such (6)

‘The Incredible Hulk’ and even Eddie Murphy’s ‘The Nutty Professor’, and

many others. There are few people who are unfamiliar (7) story, (8)

given origin to many the general background to the

has become a classic.

T46 I was him, all the time 53 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

In his long confession, Jekyll reflects on the whole course of his life and admits that his careless disposition drove him towards the pursuit of pleasure, while maintaining an apparent life of respectability. The night he first took the potion, Hyde, his other self, came out, and Jekyll was drunk with pleasure.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

pleasure • dedicated • drunk • younger • confession • potion In his (1) (2)

Jekyll explains that before the experiment he lived two lives: a life of that he kept hidden and the life of the good doctor (3)

to science and

the good of other people. Duplicity has always been his nature. The night he took the (4) he felt a terrible pain and changed completely, and in his new self, Hyde, he was (5) lighter and wicked. He was (6)

with excitement in his new body.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Is the doctor like all men? 2 Was he insincere in his two lives?

I concealed my pleasures; and when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of1 my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. […] It was thus rather the exacting2 nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench3 than in the majority of men, severed4 in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. […] Though so profound a doubledealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame5, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the

1 take stock of: fare il punto 2 exacting: esigente

3 trench: fosso 4 severed: divideva

5 laid... shame: mettevo da parte i freni e mi tuffavo nella vergogna

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

3 Did he take long to change into Hyde?

4 Did he like what he felt?

futherance6 of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. […] With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer 10 to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. […] One accursed night, I compounded the elements7, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off 15 the potion. The most racking pangs succeeded8: a grinding in the bones9, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside10, and I came to myself11 as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady 20 recklessness12, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race13 in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation14, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked15, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced16 and delighted me 25 like wine. (Abridged from the last chapter, Dr Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case)

6 futherance: sviluppo 7 compounded the elements: mischiai gli elementi (Jekyll passa ora a raccontare come, preparata la pozione con l’ultimo speciale ingrediente, si appresta a berla) 8 The... succeeded: Sopravvennero gli spasmi più lancinanti 9 a grinding in the bones: uno stridere delle ossa (Hyde è più basso di Jekyll e lo scheletro si contrae) 10 Then... subside: Poi queste sofferenze incominciarono rapidamente a placarsi 11 I came to myself: tornai in me 12 heady recklessness: un’esaltante irrequietezza 13 like a mill-race: come un turbine 14 a solution... obligation: un disciogliersi dall’impedimento di ogni obbligo 15 wicked... wicked: malvagio, dieci volte più malvagio 16 braced: esaltò

ANALYSE

DEBATE

3 Answer the questions.

4 Debate the statement in groups.

1 What details are there about the doctor’s new body?

The nature of human beings is the same in any place or time.

2 What is the real nature of man according to Jekyll?

Group A believe that human beings are identical in nature and will remain so in the future

3 After the transformation, Hyde feels pleasure, in body and in spirit. Where is the pleasure stronger? Is it innocent? 4 Hyperbole is associated with either irony or suspense. Which applies here?

Group B believe that our nature will be modified for the better in the future.

5 What kind of narrator and focalisation is there, and why? PDF

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The Victorian Age – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

ACROSS TIME The detective story AND SPACE The detective story deals with a mysterious case, most often a murder, and the most active role is played by the detective who has to solve the mystery. In the 19th century the short story – a short fictional prose narrative with a limited number of characters and consisting of one or just a few episodes – emerged almost simultaneously in Germany, the United States, France and Russia with E.T.A. Hoffmann, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Nikolai Gogol. The genre was first fully defined in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (1833–49). Poe’s stories gave impetus to both the horror story and the detective story. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) created the characters of the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson, another example of famous duos in literature. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02), one of his most popular detective stories, tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a supernatural hellish hunting dog. Holmes solves the case rationally on the basis of his analysis of clues, in the tradition first created by Edgar Allan Poe ( p. 232). Another charismatic detective was Philip Marlowe, created by Raymond Chandler (1888– 1959), an American British writer. Marlowe is a hard-boiled1 private investigator who fights against ▲ Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law organised crime but has become as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the 2009 film adaptation of Sir somewhat cynical due to the Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories corrupt legal system. In The Big Sleep, he is hired by wealthy General Sternwood to stop a blackmailer, and descends into the underworld of crime. In the early 20th century Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was known as the Queen of crime with her novels and stories, especially those revolving around two of the most ▲ Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in the 2017 film adaptation famous fictional detectives in the of Murder on the Orient Express world, Hercules Poirot and Miss by Agatha Christie Marple. In Murder on the Orient Express (1933) Mr Poirot is aboard the Orient Express travelling from Istanbul to London when a passenger, Mr Ratchett, (actually Cassetti, a criminal who in the past kidnapped and then killed a little girl) is murdered. After examining the relationships and the reactions of the passengers, the detective tells them who he thinks the murderer is. His deductions are confirmed to

be right. In The Body in the Library (1942), Miss Marple solves the case of a glamorous woman strangled in the house of one of her friends. She uses her intelligence and her knowledge of the power of evil in people, even in the quiet location of St Mary Mead, where she lives. In the 20th century, a writer who walked in Christie’s footsteps was British novelist and writer of short stories P.D. James (1920–2014). Her detective Adam Dalgliesh, the protagonist of many mystery novels, first appeared in Cover Her Face in 1962 as Detective Chief Inspector and later Commander in the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard. P.D. James combined the detective story with the psychological thriller, investigating the dark forces that guide people: obsession, revenge, greed and ambition. Her detective looks closely at the crime scenes for clues not just to the murderer, but also to the victim, and what brought them to that atrocious end of their lives. She gave Dalgliesh, a policeman and a poet, the qualities she admired the most – compassion with no sentimentality, generosity, intelligence and independence. Michael Connelly (1956) decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler. He worked as a crime reporter for the ‘Los Angeles Times‘, and this gives a touch of incredible realism to the novels with detective Hieronymus ‘Harry‘ Bosch, a veteran police homicide detective of the Los Angeles Police Department. Bosch has a strong sense of justice, hardly any regard for his career, and he pursues each case as if his very life depended upon it. He is often pushed to the limit, in the tradition of the hard-boiled detective too close to crime to remain ‘innocent’. 1 hard-boiled: dal carattere duro

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who are the great detectives created by the authors of the detective story? 2 How different are they? WEB QUEST 2 Search the web for films or series with or about these detectives. Choose a few clips that highlight their personality and methods and present them to the class. 3 Alternatively, search the web to read about one popular novel/story by one of the crime writers. Present the case that you have selected to the class: give them enough evidence to solve the case, but do not tell them how it ends.

Ideas for your map: CRIME

p. 331

301

AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

LEARNING DIGITAL O scar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray PPT

Oscar Wilde

PDF

The Happy Prince and Other Tales DT37 The Nightingale and the Rose

Profile A poet, novelist, dramatist, and exceptional speaker, Wilde’s life was at first a series of brilliant adventures; a double first-class degree in Classics from Oxford, the Newdigate Prize for poetry, a stylish London dandy and a reputation as a literary icon in the United States. His talent was revealed by a series of short stories, and by the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray. His success grew with the comedies of manners he wrote from 1892 to 1895, of which The Importance of Being Earnest remains the most popular. However, in 1895 he faced disgrace and imprisonment after his trial for homosexuality. Wilde rejected Victorian morality and Utilitarianism and chose Aestheticism ( p. 254), whose creed is ‘Art for Art’s Sake‘. He revered beauty and elevated Aesthetics to a living religion. His own figure was associated with the cult of the dandy, a man who places the greatest importance upon physical appearance and refined language as part of his attempt to make of his life a work of art. The dandy leads a bohemian life as a form of protest against the monotony of bourgeois life, pursuing hedonistic pleasure, sensation and excess. Wilde’s insistence on ‘mask-wearing’ was revolutionary to the Victorians. In a paradoxical counterattack, it meant attacking falsity with falsity itself, brought to perfection in the illusion of art. IN ACTION Look and think 1 Answer the questions.

The dandy

1 Look at the three dandies and their sartorial style. What elements of style do you think are still valid today? Which are no longer worn but are still associated with elegance?

George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778–1840) in the ‘sporting costume’ that he devised for the English nobility promenading through London’s arcades: a top hat, tails in sober tones, linen cravat, boots and breeches. 302

Painter James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) embodied the concept of the Regency dandy as a provocateur. His sartorial style included a dark suit, a monocle, a stiff collar and a walking stick.

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

Oscar Wilde in 1899; he is wearing a green carnation in his buttonhole, a distinctive trait of his style.

2 In the late 19th century, the dandy style was considered not only elegant but also transgressive after Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), the French bohemian poet, positioned himself as a rebel conveying a spiritual message that opposed the vulgarities of the everyday world. What style do you think has the same provocative force today?

LIFE 1854 Wilde was born in Dublin. He studied Classics at Trinity College.

1884 KEY FACT He continued his studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he met professor Walter Pater, one of the theorists of English Aestheticism.

1879 In London, he attracted everybody’s attention with his eccentric lifestyle and clothes.

1882 He lectured in the US and Canada about the PreRaphaelites and the Aesthetes.

1884 He married Constance Lloyd. They had two children, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).

1887–89 Wilde worked as an editor of ‘Woman’s World‘ magazine to support his family.

1895 KEY FACT He took legal action against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused him of a homosexual relationship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’). Wilde lost the case, and in the following trial it was proved that Wilde had had affairs with young boys.

1888

The Happy Prince and Other Tales

1892

• Lady Windermere’s Fan • Salomé

1891

WORKS

1893

The Picture of Dorian Gray p.304

A Woman of No Importance

1895–97 KEY FACT Wilde served two years’ hard labour for the crime of sodomy. His wife divorced him, gaining parental control of their children, and he lost all profits from his plays.

1897 He was released from Reading Gaol prison, but was bankrupt and in poor health. He travelled around Europe.

1900 He died in obscurity and poverty in Paris.

1895

The Importance of Being Earnest p. 308

1895

An Ideal Husband

1898

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

1905

De Profundis (posthumous)

IN ACTION

Wilde and Aestheticism

They said of this …

Walter Pater’s preface and conclusion to Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and Wilde’s essays are the fundamental documents of English Aestheticism. These works reveal the preference for ‘decadence’, seen as a deliberate moving away from social and political concerns, the rejection of both religion and the law of profit. In The Decay of Lying, Wilde shows how far Aestheticism is from realism and condemns realism for representing only ‘facts’ and social reality. Art is only true when it ‘lies’; lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art. The only thing that art expresses is itself.

A man for no season Richard Ellmann’s biography of Wilde, which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, revealed the complexity of a man that went from riches to rags, from being on everyone’s lips to being invisible.

‘Wilde had to live his life twice over, first in slow motion, then at top speed. During the first period he was a scapegrace, during the second a scapegoat. For the three and a half years he lived after his release from prison, he saw pass before him, mostly in dumb show, a multitude of people he had known earlier, who evaded him.’ (From Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, 1987)

2 Answer the questions. 1 What key aspect does Ellmann underline about Wilde’s life? 2 Wilde’s contemporaries found him fascinating but then most abandoned him when he fell in disgrace. Do you know of any other celebrities that had a similar destiny?

MIND MAP

Wilde’s Horatian satire Wilde was exceptional at creating witty aphorisms and paradoxes which ranged from the most trivial, such as: ‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about‘ to the most profound, such as: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars‘. His comedies cover all issues – love, marriage, religion, education, class, and art – with the purpose of raising a laugh in the vein of light Horatian satire.

Wilde’s short stories Despite their simplicity, Wilde’s fables – short stories with a moral – reveal a complex view of life. Heroes are left unrewarded and villains unpunished at times, but Wilde constantly promotes self-sacrifice, love, and compassion for suffering. The Happy Prince discusses the nature of unselfishness through the parable of the prince’s statue giving away the jewels and the gold that ornate its body to help those in need. The Nightingale and the Rose is probably the clearest fable about the nature of art: the Nightingale dies by crushing her breast against a thorn so that her blood can make a red rose grow in winter, and a young student will have a flower to give to the girl he loves. Art is an act of self-sacrifice by the artist ‘giving his blood’ to make the rose red, and it is the opposite of the indifferent materialism of ordinary life, using the precious beauty of art only to obtain superficial love and neglecting it when it is not ‘useful’.

Oscar Wilde

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

refusal of morality and Utilitarianism

cult of the dandy

falsity of art

physical appearance

decadence

refined bohemian life

freedom of art

Horatian satire – comedies of manners

short stories

1 How did Wilde’s reputation change during his life? 2 What movement can he be associated with, and what was the main idea of this movement? 3 What characteristics does the dandy have? 4 How did Wilde satirise Victorian society?

aphorisms – paradoxes

art as selfsacrifice

5 How different are his short stories from his other works?

Ideas for your map: ART

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) In À Rebours (1884) a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans ( p. 254), the protagonist, Des Esseintes, tries to live a life of pleasure in a refined decadent world where beauty, art, culture, morbidity, neurosis and artificiality fuse together. Wilde was strongly impressed by this novel as well as appreciating the publications in the ‘The Yellow Book‘ magazine ( p. 255). The result of Wilde’s admiration for both was The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was first published in the July 1890 edition of ‘Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine‘ and immediately attracted hostile attention from the London press. The Preface, which Wilde added in 1891, together with six more chapters in response to the accusations of immorality, is considered the Manifesto of English decadent Aestheticism. It consisted in a series of aphorisms, short sentences, often witty, which make a general point.

THE PLOT Dorian Gray, an incredibly handsome young man, has his portrait painted by his friend Basil Hallward. The painting ages in his place while he pursues a life of pleasure and passion under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, the perfect aesthete. The more degenerate Dorian is, the more hideous his portrait becomes. Dorian falls in love with Sybil Vane, a Shakespearean actress, and promises to marry her, but then he cruelly accuses her of being no actress, and she commits

suicide after he abandons her. After years of dissolute life, Hallward tries to persuade Dorian to change but Dorian shows the painter the horribly disfigured and aged portrait that he has kept locked up in the attic all this time, and then kills Hallward. He then stabs his own portrait; a terrible cry is heard, and the inhabitants of the house find a ghastly wrinkled corpse on the floor next to the painting of a beautiful young Dorian. They identify the dead body as Dorian’s from his rings.

IN ACTION

Themes

English in action

• The Faustian myth and the double revisited

1 Find the noun for the adjective or the adjective for the noun. 1

narcissistic

hedonistic

3 hypocrisy 4 ethics 5

spiritual

In the novel, the Faustian myth of a man selling his soul to the devil is transformed into the fable of a young man’s purity and innocence being manipulated by Lord Henry, who introduces him to a hedonistic way of life and the supremacy of youth and beauty. In this fable, the painting acts as a sort of magical mirror which reflects exactly what Dorian has become, therefore acting as his conscience. At first, Dorian feels pleasure in looking at the corruption of his own soul, but in the end he finds it intolerable and destroys the portrait. In doing so, he also destroys his real self and therefore dies. The novel also exploits the motif of the double so typical of Victorian literature; Dorian lives two parallel lives, one in the public eye full of glamour and pleasure, the other private and dedicated to hidden pleasures. He is initially innocent and naïve, but then becomes a cynical murderer.

• Dandyism, narcissism and hedonism The novel celebrates Dandyism, the cult of the senses, hedonism and narcissism. Dorian Gray‘s mentor Lord Henry Wotton and his friend and painter Basil Hallward – are dandies and under their influence Dorian Gray assumes their way of life and thinking. Basil Hallward is in love with Dorian’s beauty and paints it in his portrait. By objectifying Dorian as a work of art, Basil causes Dorian’s narcissism; the young man cannot help but feel forever fascinated by his own beauty, and the portrait becomes the central metaphor of the novel, standing for art and beauty but also corruption. Like Des Esseintes, Dorian pursues a life of pleasure; he devotes himself to the study of perfumes, embroidery and other aspects of fine art. There are no limits to the pursuit of pleasure and this leads Dorian to corrupt his spirit as revealed by the hideous portrait showing his true age and decadence.

• The critique of Victorian society Throughout the book, the contrast between Dorian’s private and public lives becomes stronger, mirroring the lives of Victorian society’s upper classes. Decadent Dandyism acts as a denunciation of the repressive morality of Victorianism, and of the hypocritical Victorian society, all too ready to accept Dorian’s ‘innocence’ as real, and full of admiration for his incredible beauty, and hypocritically ignoring Dorian’s ‘private’ life of nights spent in the most sordid areas of the city. 304

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Oscar Wilde

Interpretations The novel has several interpretations: • the ethical reading sees the work as a condemnation of Aestheticism and hedonism because Dorian loses his innocence and dies, the victim of his pursuit of pleasure; • in the aesthetic reading, instead, Dorian dies not because of his sins but because of his attempt to destroy art; • another view sees the novel as the attempt to make aesthetics become ethics. With the ‘spiritualisation of the senses’, a sort of third way between morality (which denies the senses) and hedonism (which lives only for a sensual life) the aesthete should be able to live a new kind of moral life, where the life of the senses is not rejected as immoral, but becomes the path towards a new form of morality. MIND MAP

À Rebours by J.K. Huysmans

The Picture of Dorian Gray

‘The Yellow Book’

decadent Aestheticism – hedonism

painting

Dorian’s conscience

the double

Dorian as a work of art

Dandyism

ethical – aesthetic reading

spiritualisation of the senses

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–12) to its correct half (a–l). 1

T he two main influences for The Picture of Dorian Gray were À Rebours by

Des Esseintes lives a life of pleasure characterised by

The Picture of Dorian Gray was attacked because

Like a new Faustus, Dorian is corrupted by

The painting is a magical

Dorian lives a double life, one glamorous and public,

The novel celebrates Dandyism, the cult of the

The portrait stands for art and beauty but

Decadent Dandyism acts as a denunciation of the repressive

The ethical reading sees the work

In the aesthetic reading, Dorian dies because

I n the ‘spiritualisation of the senses’ the life of the senses becomes the

a as a condemnation of Aestheticism and hedonism. b his mentor Lord Henry Wotton. c Joris-Karl Huysmans and ‘The Yellow Book’. d the other private and full of dark pleasures. e morbidity, neurosis and artificiality. f mirror and Dorian’s conscience. g it was considered immoral. h senses, hedonism and narcissism. i path towards a new form of morality. j morality of Victorianism. k of his attempt to destroy art. l also corruption.

▲ Frontispiece for À Rebours by J.-K. Huysmans

Ideas for your map: ART

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The Victorian novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T47 The horror revealed 54 The Picture of Dorian Gray

In the evening before Dorian’s 38th birthday he meets Basil Hallward, who insists on talking with him. They go to Dorian’s home, and Dorian brings the painter up to the locked room where the young man has kept his portrait, far away from anyone’s eyes but his own. Dorian pulls off the cover of the portrait and shows it to Basil.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

indifference • ideal • horrified • satyr • transformation • soul • blames • worse by the portrait, which has changed dramatically and for the (2)

Basil is (1)

since he painted it. Dorian looks at him almost with (3) (4)

of the picture. Dorian (5)

adpatation of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 How did Basil make sure that the portrait was by his hand?

2 What was Dorian doing meanwhile?

Dorian replies that this shows his (8)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him1. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden2 eyes 5 had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognise his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright 10 vermilion. It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish3 ice. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned, and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched4, and his parched 15 tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat5. The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion 20 of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so. ‘What does this mean?’ cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

1 grinning at him: che gli sogghignava 2 sodden: fiacchi

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the painter for his ruin, but Basil claims he

while the portrait now shows the face of a (7)

saw Dorian as his (6) ▲ Scene from the 1945 film

, and they talk about the

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

3 sluggish: inerte 4 His mouth twitched: La bocca si mosse in un tic

5 dank... sweat: umida di sudore appiccicoso

Oscar Wilde

3 What did Dorian accuse Basil of?

4 How did Basil explain the change in the painting?

5 Which mythological figure symbolises Dorian’s distorted sexuality?

‘Years ago, when I was a boy,’ said Dorian Gray, crushing6 the flower in his hand, ‘you met 25 me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours7, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I don’t know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer.’ ‘I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! The thing is impossible. The room is 30 damp8. Mildew9 has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible.’ ‘Ah, what is impossible?’ murmured the young man, going over to the window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass. 35 ‘You told me you had destroyed it.’ ‘I was wrong. It has destroyed me.’ ‘I don’t believe it is my picture.’ ‘Can’t you see your ideal in it?’ said Dorian, bitterly. ‘My ideal, as you call it…’ 40 ‘As you called it.’ 10 ‘There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful . You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr11.’ ‘It is the face of my soul.’ (From Chapter XI) 6 crushing: schiacciando 7 L’amico a cui Dorian fa riferimento è Lord Henry Wotton, che lo iniziò alla pratica del piacere. 8 damp: umida

9 Mildew: Muffa 10 shameful: vergognoso 11 Il satiro, figura mitologica del mondo greco-romano, è rappresentato in forma

d’uomo con orecchie, coda ed eventualmente zoccoli di cavallo o di capro; è associato alla lascivia che si sfoga in manifestazioni animalesche.

ANALYSE 3 Complete the table with the Gothic elements present in the passage; how do they relate to the signs of beauty still present in the portrait? Why? The setting

The portrait

The painter’s reactions

4 Answer the questions. 1 How different are Basil’s and Dorian’s attitudes in the scene? 2 Why did Dorian crush the flower? Choose the statement that best describes the symbolic meaning of his gesture. a

Dorian was disgusted by Basil’s reaction.

Dorian is shocked by Basil’s reaction.

T he flower stood for the beauty that Dorian had killed in himself over the years. INTERPRET

5 Compare the Gothic atmosphere of this passage with the one present in ‘The miserable wretch’ from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ( p. 227): how similar/different are they? Focus on the characters and the setting. DEBATE 6 Debate the statement in groups.

Beauty is subjective. Group A believe that beauty is totally subjective. Group B believe that real beauty is universally valid.

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Victorian drama

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Full plot

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From The Importance of Being Earnest DT38 Divorces are made in heaven

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Like other comedies by Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest proved hugely successful in the fashionable theatres in London’s West End. Actor and director George Alexander staged Wilde’s plays in realistic settings, recreating the interiors of the luxurious houses and gardens where the characters lived. The costumes were also extremely elaborate and often determined the fashion for the coming season.

A well-made play, a comedy of manners, a satire and a farce For this play, Wilde is indebted to the tradition of the well-made play, the comedy of manners ( p. 130), satire and popular forms such as the farce. The play is a carefully constructed well-made play (from the French pièce bien-faite) in three acts with the conventional steps of exposition, complication, crisis and denouement. The plot has all the elements of a comedy of manners: marriage, an abandoned child, double life and refined language. As a comedy of manners, the play satirises the hypocrisy, superficiality, artificiality and money mindedness of the upper classes of Victorian society. Dialogues are witty and comic and Wilde frequently uses double meanings and exaggerations; he treats what is light as serious and what is serious as light. The play can also be seen as a farce as it contains changes of identity, stock characters and lovers misunderstanding each other. The scene in which Jack misidentifies Prism as his unmarried mother is typical of the endings of farces.

Themes • Identity and the double

▲ Poster of the 2002 film adaptation of Wilde’s comedy

According to Wilde, identity is socially constructed through language and social conventions. The double identities and misunderstandings are all centred upon the ‘importance of a name’, Ernest, a pun on the first name and the adjective ‘earnest’ (serious and sincere). The protagonist both is and isn’t Ernest/earnest; earnestness and truth are the play’s primary object of satire. Algernon and Jack escape the social pressure to behave themselves in public and be ‘serious’ thanks to their double lives. Jack’s double identity is paralleled by Algy’s Bunburying and the change of names and identities builds up comic misunderstandings coming close to the absurd, for example, when both Gwendolen and Cecily believe they are engaged to Ernest only to find out

THE PLOT Act I Algernon Moncrieff (Algy), the nephew of Lady Bracknell, forces his best friend, Ernest Worthing, to admit to living a double life. In the country, Ernest’s real name is Jack, and Jack pretends to his young ward, Cecily Cardew, that he has a dissolute brother in town, Ernest. Algy also admits to having a double life thanks to his imaginary friend Bunbury, whose illness gives him an excuse to leave the city. Ernest proposes to Gwendolen Fairfax, but Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother, is horrified when she learns that Ernest was adopted (he was found in a handbag at Victoria Station) and forbids Gwendolen to marry him. Ernest decides to go to the country house and Algy follows him. Act II At Jack’s country house, Algernon pretends to be Ernest and he meets Cecily, who says that actually they are in love and engaged, as she wrote in her diary. When Jack arrives and says that Ernest, his brother, is dead, Cecily shows him his ‘brother’, Algy. Neither Algy nor Ernest reveal their true names to Cecily. Gwendolen arrives 308

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unexpectedly and meets Cecily alone. They make friends at once but when they realise they are both engaged to Ernest Worthing they argue. Ernest and Algy come back, and when their real names are revealed both girls break off the engagements in indignation. Act III Gwendolen and Cecily forgive their lovers, who now both want to be baptised to change their names to Ernest. Lady Bracknell arrives in pursuit of her daughter. She still refuses to give her consent to Gwendolen and Jack’s union, and Jack refuses to agree to the marriage of Cecily with Algernon. Miss Prism, Cecily’s governess, enters the scene and Lady Bracknell recognises her; twenty-eight years earlier Miss Prism lost a baby boy. Jack produces the very same handbag he was left in by Miss Prism. This proves that he is the elder son of Lady Bracknell’s late sister, and therefore Algernon’s elder brother – and finally finds out his name is indeed Ernest. The happy couples embrace: Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, Miss Prism and Reverend Chasuble (whom Miss Prism has always been in love with).

Oscar Wilde IN ACTION Web quest 1 Wilde’s comedy presents situations which are deliberately absurd; John and Algy pretend that they are brothers, and they really are, Gwendolen and Cecily share the same passion for a man just because his name is Ernest and for a short time this man does not exist. Search the web for plays of the Theatre of the Absurd, a movement of the second half of the 20th century ( p. 447), and choose one. Summarise its plot and compare its ‘absurdity’ to Wilde’s comedy.

well-made play

satire of upper classes

that neither of them is. Characters assume identities which they believe are false but which prove to be truly theirs in the end; the main question is whether people are what they are or what they appear to be.

• Courtship and marriage Gwendolen’s request that Jack/Ernest makes his marriage proposal on his knees and asking the all-important question, ‘Will you marry me?‘ is very amusing, but shows how ‘romantic courtship’ is nothing but a ceremony to be dutifully performed. Both Cecily and Gwendolen base the truth of their engagement with ‘Ernest’ on the publication of the news in the papers, whether local or in London. Marriage is central to plot development and a major object of Wilde’s satire. The conventional preoccupations of rank, family background, lineage, fortune and possessions that determined a careful ‘selection process’ of suitable candidates is parodied in Lady Bracknell’s interview with Jack Worthing. The final resolution of the play, with three marriages and at least one character, Ernest, discovering that he has been telling nothing but the truth while he thought he was lying, show Wilde’s flippant accusation through paradox of the false morality of the Victorian Age.

MIND MAP

The Importance of Being Earnest

comedy of Manners

identity – language

witty dialogues

farce

the double

courtship – marriage

change of names and identities

false morality and conventions

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

2 What are the themes of the comedy?

1 What pun is present in the title? To what effect?

3 What characterises Wilde’s style?

T48 What’s in a name? 55 The Importance of Being Earnest

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Ernest Worthing (Jack here), a wealthy member of the upper middle classes, is going to propose to the woman he loves, Gwendolen Fairfax, an aristocratic young lady, taking advantage of her mother’s absence.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

proposal • absence • name • knees • marry • declare • weather • happy Jack first introduces the topic of today’s (1) to (2)

, though his intention is to ask Gwendolen

him while her mother isn’t present. Gwendolen suggests that he should take and Jack nervously tries to (4)

advantage of Lady Bracknell’s (3)

Gwendolen explains why she loves him; Jack is terribly (5) love him if his (6)

his love.

about it but asks if she could

were different. Gwendolen replies she could not; Jack is confused and

says he should be baptised at once. Gwendolen insists that he should make his (7) proper way, and he duly asks the question ‘Will you marry me?’ on his (8)

in the .

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Ideas for your map: LOVE/MARRIAGE

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UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What kind of world does Gwendolen say she lives in? 2 What is Gwendolen’s ideal? 3 Why will Gwendolen marry Jack?

4 What problem does Jack realise he has?

5 What does Gwendolen think of names such as John and Jack?

Jack Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax. Gwendolen Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous. Jack I do mean something else. 5 Gwendolen I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong. Jack And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell’s temporary absence . . . Gwendolen I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back 10 suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about. Jack [Nervously.] Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl… I have ever met since… I met you. Gwendolen Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. [Jack looks at her 15 in amazement.] We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told; and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was 20 destined to love you. Jack You really love me, Gwendolen? Gwendolen Passionately! Jack Darling! You don’t know how happy you’ve made me. 25 Gwendolen My own Ernest! Jack But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest? Gwendolen But your name is Ernest. Jack Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me then? Gwendolen [Glibly1.] Ah! That is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most 30 metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them. Jack Personally, darling, to speak quite candidly, I don’t much care about the name of Ernest. I don’t think the name suits me at all. Gwendolen It suits you perfectly. It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces 35 vibrations. Jack Well, really, Gwendolen, I must say that I think there are lots of other much nicer names. I think Jack, for instance, a charming name. Gwendolen Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and 40 they all, without exception, were more than usually plain2. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity3 for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest. Jack Gwendolen, I must get christened4 at once – I mean we must get married at once. 45

1 glibly: con leggerezza 2 plain: scialbi

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3 domesticity: nome familiare

4 christened: battezzato (Jack vuole cambiare il suo nome)

Oscar Wilde There is no time to be lost. Gwendolen Married, Mr. Worthing? Jack [Astounded5.] Well . . . surely. You know that I love you, and you led me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me. Gwendolen I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all 50 about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on. Jack Well, may I propose to you now? Gwendolen I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment6, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly before-hand 55 that I am fully determined to accept you. Jack Gwendolen! Gwendolen Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me? Jack You know what I have got to say to you. Gwendolen Yes, but you don’t say it. 60 Jack Gwendolen, will you marry me? [Goes on his knees.] Gwendolen Of course I will, darling. (From Act I)

5 astounded: sbalordito

6 to spare… disappointment: per risparmiarle qualsiasi delusione

ANALYSE 3 Complete the table with all the words revealing Gwendolen’s romantic love for Ernest and explaining why she finds his name fascinating. Does she sound passionate or indifferent in her declaration? Gwendolen’s declaration of love to Ernest

Gwendolen’s fascination with his name

▲ Colith Firth and Rupert Everett in the 2002 film adpatation of Wilde's comedy

4 Choose the correct option. The main point of the scene is: a

to make a parody of love and romance, capturing the emptiness of Victorian values that rely on form and appearances.

to show the depth of the characters’ passion and reveal the essence of their different personalities.

to solve the conflict of marriage between characters belonging to different social classes.

5 Gwendolen uses hyperbole and exaggerations to talk about a person’s name. Is the effect comic or tragic? Why? INTERPRET 6 Gwendolen chooses a husband on the basis of his name, and Jack accepts being chosen on the basis of a name that is not even his. Wilde is asking if marrying for a person’s name is any more absurd than marrying based on wealth, rank, lineage. Is his warning still valid today in your opinion? PDF

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FILMS FOR THOUGHT

The sad Happy Prince of art The Happy Prince (2018) Rupert Everett wrote, directed and starred in this gripping drama about Oscar Wilde’s final years: his disgraced exile-agony in Naples and Paris on being released from prison after the conviction for ‘gross indecency’. This was the result of his affair with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, whose enraged, reactionary father, the Marquess of Queensberry, had provoked Wilde’s catastrophic libel action following an accusation of his ‘posing as a sodomite’. Everett’s movie shows Wilde living in squalor and his illness and death but with flashbacks to his great days. Everett imagines him, in extremis, befriending a young male Parisian prostitute and his tough younger brother and playfully fascinating them with his fairytale The Happy Prince. In earlier happier times, he would recite to his equally entranced sons this story of a statue who allows a swallow to denude him of all his gold to feed the poor. In Everett’s hands, the tale becomes an ambiguous parable for Wilde’s passion and (possible) redemption: the unhappy prince who makes a lonely discovery that love is the only thing worth worshipping.

Wilde (1997) The film follows Wilde’s life from just before his marriage to Constance to his death in Paris after the trial and the two-year hard labour sentence. During the film, Wilde and Constance in turn tell the story of The Selfish Giant – the story of a giant who learns to share his garden with all the children after meeting a very special child – to their children, and Wilde almost finishes the story in a voiceover. Wilde is torn between his love for his wife and children and the discovery of his dormant homosexuality and so of his love for the needy and selfish Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde’s personality – his brilliant wit, his selfdestructive instinct and his broken spirit after prison – is presented as complex and contradictory.

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The Happy Prince (from The Happy Prince and Other Tales 1888) The statue of the Happy Prince is made of lead but covered with gold and adorned with jewels. He lived a life of privileges but now he can see the misery of all those who are poor and suffer. He persuades a little bird – a swallow – to help him give away all his jewels, even the sapphires which are his eyes, and finally the gold that covers his body, to help people in need. The Swallow dies kissing the Prince because it does not fly south and the cold kills it, and the city administrators take down the statue, now made ugly, to melt it. God takes the heart of lead of the Prince, which would not melt, and the Sparrow, to heaven.

The Selfish Giant (from The Happy Prince and Other Tales 1888) The children play in the Giant’s beautiful garden every afternoon after school. There is rich fruit on the trees and the birds sing sweetly. After seven years, the Giant returns and sends the children away. He builds a wall around the garden to keep the children out, but spring does not come any more. One day the children enter the garden through a hole in the wall, and spring returns except for a corner where a small child cries because he can’t climb up the tree to make it flower. The Giant helps the child to climb the tree, and from then on in the years to come he plays with the children in the garden. But the small child he helped disappears. One winter day, the giant sees a corner of the garden in flower and the child is there. He has wounds in his hands, but when the giant says that he will kill the man who hurt the child, the child replies that they are the wounds of love and invites the giant to his garden. The next day, the children find the giant dead.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Answer the questions. 1 Search the web for the trailers of both biopics. Which one shows Wilde most truthfully in your opinion? 2 What common theme do the short stories The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant have? 3 Do the stories have a similar ending, too? 4 Both biopics The Happy Prince and Wilde parallel Wilde’s life with one of his most popular short stories. What aspect of the artist’s personality and vicissitudes do you think that the directors want to underline?

▲ The little boy that the Giant loved.

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THE USA LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL A merican literature becomes independent PPT

The Victorian Age: Literature and Culture in the USA

American literature becomes independent The beginnings and individual writers in the 19th century In the early colonial period, schooling was not easily accessible to colonists. In the period preceding the War of Independence, some progress was achieved; new colleges were founded, and newspapers, magazines and books were in great demand. Most published works were sermons and theological tracts, didactic and marked by Puritanism, or consisted of historical works, diaries and biographies, with no fiction. After the War of Independence, religions, languages, races and economic interests were different from state to state. The new country lacked a common folklore rooted in the past. The two writers who began to give the new country a national history were Washington Irving (1783–1859), the first American writer of fiction, whose ghost story Rip van Winkle (1819) traced back the origins of New York to the first Dutch settlers, and James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), who published The Last of the Mohicans (1826), set during the French and Indian War. Cooper lamented the destruction of Native Americans and of their natural habitat by the white man. Two women opened new paths into American literature. The first, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), a passionate abolitionist, was one of the few examples of abolitionist literature by non-former slaves with her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–52). The second, Louisa May Alcott (1832–88), gained great popularity with Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886). Alcott was raised in a stimulating context in Concord, among the great representatives of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. The four female daughters of Little Women are modelled on Alcott and her sisters. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March are raised in relative poverty by their mother, Marmee, while their father serves as an army chaplain during the American Civil War. The girls make friends with Theodore Lawrence (Laurie), the lonely grandson of their rich neighbour; he falls in love with Jo, the obstinate tomboy of the family and the girl with the strongest will and personality, but she refuses his proposal. In the end, all the girls marry (Laurie marries the youngest March daughter, Amy), with the exception of Beth, who dies from scarlet fever.

▲ Poster of the 1992 film adaptation of Cooper’s novel

American Renaissance (1830–65) Starting from the 1830s, there was a period of incredible artistic vitality, the American Renaissance, mostly based in New England. The model was English Romanticism, with its love of nature and emotions. In the 1850s, in only five years, its Golden Age saw the publication of Emerson’s Representative Men (1850), Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), Thoreau’s Walden (1854), and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). Emily Dickinson’s Poems, although written in this period, were published only after her death and in a complete final edition in 1955.

Transcendentalism Concord, Massachusetts, not far from Cambridge and Harvard, is where a group of New England writers known as the Concord Transcendentalists lived and wrote. Transcendentalism was at first a movement of ideas and eventually became a literary movement. It was born as an antiCalvinist movement, shaped by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and also influenced by the Quaker doctrine of the inner light (or Christ) within each individual. Transcendentalists believed that people are innately good and that society and its institutions corrupt the individual. Their emphasis on self-reliance and individuality leading to independence and optimism was a view that contradicted the traditional Calvinist insistence on original sin and the natural evil of man. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), an essayist and poet, led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century: in his 1836 essay Nature, he defended individualism and criticised the 314

The Victorian Age – American literature becomes independent

▲ Thoreau’s statue near his cabin at Walden Pond

oppressive influence of society on the individual. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), include his best-known essay Self-Reliance, which insists on the need for each individual to avoid conformity and follow instead his own instincts and ideas. Henry David Thoreau (1817–62), a Transcendentalist philosopher and naturalist, lived alone near Walden Pond outside Concord as an experiment in self-sufficiency to prove that an individual could live a richly satisfying life in solitude, supporting himself on what he personally grew. This ‘experiment’, which he describes in Walden (1854), lasted two years. Among the poets, Walt Whitman (1819–92 p. 322) expressed an almost mystical identification with his own country and the hope for a prosperous post-Civil War era in his Leaves of Grass (1855). He believed in the power of the common man to renew the world, and glorified all that belongs to nature. He worshipped the human body because, by containing in itself the seeds of life through sex, it makes each person a potential bridge between past and future generations. The poet Emily Dickinson (1830–86 p. 326) lived a life of seclusion but her poems are highly individual both in themes and style, and reveal the pervading influence of Transcendentalism as a principle guiding her towards independence of mind and spirit. Her poems were a major influence on the poetry of the 20th century as they were discovered in the 1955 final edition.

Anti-Transcendentalism The other great writers of the age gave voice to different aspects of the American identity and were critical of Transcendentalism, which ignored the darker side of human nature. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49 p. 232) objected to Transcendentalism as its reformism was naïve and aesthetically inadequate. In his tales, Poe explored the mysteries surrounding human nature through psychologically complex characters, sometimes close to madness. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) thought that one of his ancestors had been one of the judges in the Witch Trials at Salem, and was oppressed by a sense of guilt for the sufferings inflicted through misguided religious zeal on innocent people. In The Scarlet Letter (1850), the story of an adulteress obliged to wear a scarlet ‘A’ on her bosom as the symbol of her guilt, he shows his deep concerns with the problem of sin and expiation. He rejected the Rousseauian belief in man’s original goodness and the bland optimism of the Transcendentalists but also the Puritans’ oppressive pessimism and censorious morality. Herman Melville’s (1819–91 p. 318) Captain Ahab in Moby Dick (1851) may be seen as the personification of the author’s own attraction to and repulsion for the Transcendentalist idea of the supremacy of the individual and his ability to live in nature. Man, represented by Ahab, instead, engages in a doomed fight against nature, represented by the white whale, Moby Dick, who leads man to self-destruction. IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 tomboy = femminuccia / maschiaccio 2 self-reliance = fiducia in / paura di se stessi 3 self-sufficiency = autostima / autosufficienza 4 seclusion = isolamento / imprigionamento 5 recollection = raccolta / ricordi Web quest 2 Search the web to find out what happened at Salem between 1692 and 1693, when the witch hunt, which had already died out in Europe, started in the small village in Massachusetts. Present your findings to the class and discuss the reasons for this tragic event. ▶ T.H. Matteson, Examination of a Witch (1853)

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The Transition period (1865–1910)

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

In the Transition period, American literature followed the example of the English Victorian Age with the exceptions of the Western humour of Mark Twain’s novels and the so-called Social Rebels. ‘Western’ or ‘Frontier’ humour reached its climax in the works of Mark Twain (1835–1910). In his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), he combines fantasy, realism and his typical Western American humour, describing adventures and events set in present or past times, which also include recollections of his own career as a pilot on the Mississippi. Only a small group of writers, the so-called Social Rebels, decided to write against the conventions of the time: among them Jack London (1876–1916), a novelist and short-story writer who wrote The Call of the Wild (1903) set in the Klondike Gold Rush, while Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) A Girl of the Streets (1893) was revolutionary in American fiction with its explicit descriptions of alcoholism, prostitution and general degradation. MIND MAP

The beginnings and 19th-century writers

sermons – tracts – diaries – biographies

national history

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle

women writers

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

abolitionist literature MIND MAP

English Romanticism

Transcendentalism

American Renaissance

AntiTranscendentalism

self-reliance – optimism Ralph Waldo Emerson – essayist

Transition period

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Western humour

Social Rebels

Mark Twain

Jack London

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Henry David Thoreau – naturalist Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass Emily Dickinson, Poems

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What type of works were most popular in the period before the War of Independence? 2 Who gave the USA the first works about the country’s own history? 3 What is the American Renaissance, and where was it based? 4 What characterised Transcendentalists? 5 Who were its main representatives? 6 Who were the anti-Transcendentalists, and why were they critical of the movement? 7 Which new trends emerged in the Transition period? 316

The Victorian Age – American Renaissance (1830–65)

▲ Scene from the 1974 film adaptation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Ideas for your map: NATURE/SIN

p. 331

WOMEN THAT Jo March, the first American MADE HISTORY fiction(al) writer

▼ Saoirse Ronan as Jo March in the

AGENDA 2030

The novel Little Women gave its author, Louisa May Alcott, the chance to reveal her own personality and her feminist attitude in the depiction of its protagonist, Jo, a rebellious tomboy whose literary ambitions parallel Alcott’s own. Like Jo (Josephine March, the second eldest daughter), Alcott was the second of four sisters who grew up in Massachusetts. Her mother was strong and loving, but Alcott hides the reality of her real father – a religious fanatic unable to provide for his family – under the story of Mr March serving as a chaplain in the Civil War after losing the family fortune. Jo’s family is poor but Alcott’s suffering in childhood was much harder. Jo resists conforming to traditional expectations of femininity and domesticity. She writes and stages plays with her sisters, doesn’t like wearing gowns and ▲ Louisa May Alcott gloves, runs and plays with Laurie (the March’s rich neighbour and an orphan) as a boy would do, though in the end she is required by convention (and Alcott’s publisher) to choose marriage and children over artistic greatness. However, Alcott has Jo fall in love with an unconventional suitor who takes her writing seriously and encourages Jo to find her true voice rather than writing sensational stories that sell well. For herself, Alcott chose the opposite after her success as a ‘literary spinster’. The 2019 film adaptation, shot in Concord, Massachusetts, where Alcott and her family lived, shows how the character’s and the writer’s lives diverge, and highlights that happiness for a woman is not necessarily being a wife and mother, but seeing her ‘creature‘ – her novel – come out of the printing press.

2019 film version of the novel

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which writers started a tradition of significant female authorship in the early 19th century? 2 What changed in the Victorian Age for women? 3 Which women writers were there? 4 How did they present love and marriage? 5 What aspects of Alcott’s own life are present in Jo March in Little Women? WEB QUEST 2 Search the web for clips of Little Women, which has been adapted many times. Choose one scene that you like and compare the different versions – your purpose is to decide in class which is the most and the least ‘feminist’ version.

Ideas for your map: WOMEN EMANCIPATION

p. 331

317

THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS American Renaissance LEARNING DIGITAL H erman Melville and Moby Dick PDF

Moby Dick: full plot

PDF

From Moby Dick DT39 What’s Moby Dick to me?

Herman Melville (1819–1891) Profile Melville’s sea experiences, his whaling trips and the South Seas formed the content of his books, but he also drew from printed sources with the intention of being realistic and exact to the minutest detail about life at sea. He extensively read mythology, anthropology, history and Shakespeare, whose language and poetic devices fascinated him. In Moby Dick and his other works, Melville was able to develop adventure stories which explored innately American themes: religion versus science, human limitations and emerging technology, and truth versus American myth. He shows a modern awareness of the deceptiveness and complexity of reality; for example, the white whale in Moby Dick is at the same time wonderful and terrible, and the crew is a microcosm of the whole of American society. The ‘pagans’ are mostly harpooners from different countries and races: Queequeg, from a remote island called Rokovoko; Tashtego, an Indian; Daggoo, a gigantic African man; Fedallah, a native of India who, besides serving as a rower, is a diabolical advisor to Ahab. Melville‘s novel is now acclaimed as one of the greatest epics of all times, but it was not well received in his time as it was too allegorical and mysterious, and the interest of American readers was more in the West and the Frontier.

Style The language of his novels is extremely rich, varying from the familiar and colloquial speech of everyday life to ‘poetic’ prose. Three main features make the prose ‘poetic’: abundant literary allusion, the deliberately exaggerated repetition of words and the use of unusual adjective-noun combinations. As for syntax, Melville’s sentences tend to be very long.

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Nowadays, whales are seen as creatures to admire and save from extinction. Search the web to find information about your country’s legislation concerning whale hunting and present it to the class.

Moby Dick, or The White Whale (1851) The first draft of Moby Dick was just an adventurous sea-story. Under the influence of Hawthorne, whose works were moral tales, Melville rewrote it as a complex work in which realistic facts are elevated into symbols. The main symbol is the white whale. Although Moby Dick only appears in the last three chapters of the novel, ‘he’ permeates the whole work in the incurable obsession of Ahab, the captain of the whaling ship Pequod, who has an inexplicable sense of Moby Dick’s presence.

THE PLOT Ishmael sets sail as a whaler on board the Pequod, together with his new friend Queequeg, a harpooner, and a crew formed by men from different countries, races and of different religions. The Pequod’s captain is Captain Ahab, a man with an ivory leg in place of the one broken off by a white sperm whale known as Moby Dick. Ahab’s objective is to hunt down Moby Dick and avenge himself, and the Pequod crosses the oceans in search of the sperm whale. Moby Dick 318

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

is sighted and for three days Ahab pursues it, but the whale smashes boats, brings destruction and escapes. On the third day, three boats are lowered with Ahab leading the way. The line of one of the harpoons catches Ahab around the neck and he is carried away by the whale. Moby Dick shatters the Pequod, which sinks. All die, except Ishmael, who clings for salvation to the empty coffin Queequeg had built for himself.

LIFE 1819 Herman Melville was born in New York.

1832 His father died a bankrupt and he took up several different jobs (bank clerk, farm labourer, school teacher and sailor).

1838 He crossed the Atlantic on an English merchant ship.

1841 KEY FACT On a voyage to the Pacific aboard the American whaler Acushnet he deserted the ship and hid on an island, inhabited by the Taipis people.

1846 He signed on as a harpooner on another American whaler, but left the ship in the Hawaiian islands.

1846

WORKS

Typee

IN ACTION

Themes

Look and think

• The whale

1849 KEY FACT He travelled to England and settled down with his wife in Massachusetts, where he met Nathaniel Hawthorne.

1847

1856–57 He visited Europe and the Holy Land.

1891 He died of a heart attack.

1851

Moby Dick, or The White Whale p. 318

Omoo

1924

Billy Budd, Foretopman (posthumous)

Moby Dick is an exceptionally large white sperm whale with a wrinkled brow, a crooked jaw and an especially high spout. For Ahab, the whale is pure evil to be fought at all costs, while Ishmael, the narrator of the novel and the only survivor of the tragic hunt, has feelings of sympathy and reverence for the whale. Moby Dick is a powerful symbol whose nature escapes all definitions, despite Ishmael’s meticulous listing and analysis of whiteness, which makes Moby Dick the most beautiful and terrifying creature of the seas. He may stand for purity and innocence, but also for death.

• The sublime The imperturbable depths of the ocean, and the enormous power of the great white whale are presented as infinitely large or infinitely powerful, and evoke the feeling of the sublime.

• Rebellion The references to The Book of Jonah and The Book of Job, two Biblical books, frame the figure of Ahab; Jonah learns that he can’t escape God’s will, and Job bears all pain with patience. Unlike them, Ahab revolts against God, or nature, or whatever the whale might be. Ahab is seeking revenge against the white whale because he is the mask for his real enemy, i.e. any authority that tries to rule over Ahab.

Language and style

▲ William Turner, The Whale Ship

(1845). The painting represents the fight between a whale and a hunting ship, with the artist’s typical use of light.

2 Answer the questions. 1 Where are the whale and the ship? 2 Are the shapes vague or clearly defined? To what effect? 3 Which figure seems to be more clearly part of the ocean?

MIND MAP

sea and whale trip experiences – South seas

printed sources

The novel was surprisingly innovative for Melville’s time as it combines very different content: commentaries on the significance of all events, accurate descriptions of whale hunting, actual cetology lectures, references to the Bible and myths and legends of various countries and ages. Melville adopts a very elevated style, with archaic forms and elaborated syntax in imitation of Biblical language; he uses precise nautical words, especially those concerning whale hunting, and rich figurative language. Melville tends to favour the first-person narrative, but he also includes chapters and scenes written from the omniscient authorial viewpoint. He also varies the narrative technique by casting scenes in dramatic form, using soliloquies, asides and dialogues, and adding ‘stage directions’.

Herman Melville

religion vs science

colloquial speech – poetic prose

Moby Dick, or the White Whale

purity – innocence – death

Ahab’s obsession

the whale

rebellion

symbol

pure evil

sublime

Ideas for your map: NATURE

p. 331

319

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 What does Moby Dick represent?

1 Where did Melville find inspiration for his works?

4 Who/What does Ahab revolt against?

2 How was Moby Dick received in his time, and why?

5 What is Melville’s style like?

T49 The chase: third day 56 Moby Dick, or The White Whale

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

The harpoon boats are launched once again, and Moby Dick attacks. Then he heads towards the ship, and Ahab looks at him from the small harpoon boat. The final chase draws to its end, taking all living human beings with it.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

sink • gulf • waves • harpooners • determined • motionless • drag • assault • rope • curses • smashes • breach • birds • disappears • depths • paralysed All the seamen sit (1)

. Moby Dick (2) . A (4)

for the final (3)

is opened in the boat; Ahab realises that it is

without him, and (6)

going to (5) at Moby Dick (7) (8)

his head into the boat the whale; he throws his harpoon

to follow the whale endlessly. Ahab strikes the whale, but the catches the captain round the neck, and he (9)

The seamen are (10)

into the sea.

. Only the highest masts of the ship are still visible, but the

(11)

do not move. Concentric circles (12)

(13)

; some (14)

has disappeared, as the (16)

fly over the steep (15)

the Pequod into the where the boat

roll on.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Are the sailors active or inactive? 2 Does the whale’s attack seem deliberate to the seamen?

3 Where does Moby Dick surface? 4 Why is Ahab humbled by the whale’s fatal attack?

Nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained1 in their hands, just as they had darted2 from their various employments; all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of overspreading semicircular foam3 before him as he rushed. Retribution4, swift vengeance, eternal malice5 were in his whole aspect, and 5 spite6 of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress7 of his forehead smote8 the ship’s starboard bow9, till men and timbers reeled10. Some fell flat upon their faces. […] Through the breach11, they heard the waters pour12, as mountain torrents down a flume13. […] Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel14; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards 10 of Ahab’s boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent15. “I turn my body from the sun […] death-glorious ship! Must ye then perish16, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death17 on 1 retained: trattenuti 2 darted: lanciati 3 foam: scia di schiuma 4 Retribution: punizione 5 malice: malvagità 6 spite: nonostante 7 buttress: sperone

320

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

8 smote: distrusse 9 starboard bow: prua di tribordo 10 reeled: barcollarono 11 breach: breccia 12 pour: rovesciarsi 13 flume: canale

14 quivering… keel: fremendo lungo la chiglia della nave 15 quiescient: quiescente (a riposo) 16 ye then perish: allora devi perire 17 lonely death: morte solitaria (Ahab non può affondare con la sua barca)

Herman Melville lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost18 greatness lies in my topmost grief. […] Towards thee I roll19, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple20 with thee; from hell’s 15 heart I stab21 at thee; for hate’s sake22 I spit my last breath23 at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses24 to one common pool25! And since neither can be mine let me then tow to pieces26, while still chasing thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear27!” The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves28; – ran foul29. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it30; but the flying 20 turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring31 their victim, he was shot32 out of the boat, ere33 the crew knew he was gone […] and smiting34 the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced35 boat’s crew stood still; then turned. “The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums36 saw her sidelong fading phantom37, 25 as in the gaseous Fata Morgana38; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches39, the pagan harpooners still maintained their sinking lookouts40 on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized41 the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole42, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip43 of the Pequod out of sight. […] 30 Now small fowls44 flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf45; a sullen46 white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed47, and the great shroud48 of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

5 Does the whale carry Ahab away by choice or by accident?

6 What happens after the boat has sunk into the vortex?

(Abridged from Chapter 135)

18 topmost: la più grande 19 Towards… roll: verso di te io avanzo 20 grapple: lotto corpo a corpo 21 stab: pugnalo 22 for hate’s sake: per amor d’odio 23 spit my last breath: sputo il mio ultimo respiro 24 coffins and hearses: bare e carri funebri (le barche) 25 to... pool: tutti assieme (nel mare) 26 tow... pieces: trascinarti fino a farti a pezzi

27 give up the spear: rinuncio alla mia lancia 28 grooves: scanalature 29 ran foul: si imbroglia 30 did clear it: riuscì a liberlarla 31 bowstring: corda d’arco 32 shot: lanciato 33 ere: before 34 smiting: colpendo 35 tranced: come incantati 36 dim… mediums: vapori offuscati e stupefacenti

37 fading phantom: fantasma evanescente 38 La Fata Morgana è un miraggio del mare, una immagine doppia rovesciata che si vede sospesa sopra gli alberi o sull’acqua. Pequod è uno specchio di Moby Dick. 39 lofty perches: posizioni elevate 40 lookouts: posizioni 41 seized: afferrarono (il movimento delle onde è simile ad un

incantesimo che afferra la barca e la trascina sottacqua) 42 oar... lance-pole: remo, e ogni asta di lancia 43 chip: asse 44 fowls: uccelli 45 yawning gulf: abisso spalancato 46 sullen: cupo 47 collapsed: collassò (il vortice che si è aperto attorno alla barca che affonda si chiude e sparisce) 48 shroud: sudario

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Does Ahab see himself as a loser, or still as a winner? 2 Sounds and silence are very important to create a sense of tragic grandeur. Who speaks/utters any sound, and when? 3 The extract presents the seamen, Moby Dick and the ship/boat; which of them is described both realistically and symbolically? Provide a few examples. INTERPRET 4 Compare Ahab to the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge ( p. 200). What traits do they have in common? How do they differ? DEBATE 5 Debate the statement in groups.

The forces of nature are too strong for man to oppose them. Group A believe that confrontation with nature always ends in disaster for man. Group B believe that man should not oppose nature but follow its rules.

▲ A scene from the 2015 film adaption of the novel In the Heart of the Sea, a prequel of Moby Dick

PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

321

THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS Transcendentalism

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

LEARNING DIGITAL W alt Whitman and Leaves of Grass PPT

Walt Whitman

Profile

▲ George Caleb Bingham,

The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846)

Whitman’s travels brought him into contact with both the natural landscape and the people of America, whom he celebrated in his works. At first only Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, two leading figures of Transcendentalism ( p. 314), praised his poetry but by the late 1860s his reputation grew, above all with European writers, who regarded him not only as a poet, but also as a sage and prophet. Today, Whitman is recognised as the father of American poetry. He expressed an almost mystical identification with his own country and the hope for a prosperous post-Civil War era. He loved his people and his land with its wonderful natural scenery, which was the result of both his travels and his deep familiarity with the multitudes of New York City. He celebrated individualism, democracy, equality and freedom for the common man. He presented himself as an Americanised Jesus empathising with all people. In his vision of a nation of divine people, Whitman assumed a prophetic voice reminiscent of Old Testament prophets. He glorified all that belongs to nature and worshipped the human body because, by containing in itself the seeds of life through sex, it makes each person a potential bridge between past and future generations.

Themes Whitman’s belief in the potential present in humanity and his celebration of the self makes him a Transcendentalist. Like most transcendentalist works, Leaves of Grass explores the relationship between man and nature and the value of the mind and spirit. It also celebrates physical love. Whitman’s explicit descriptions of physical pleasure in the book were highly offensive to many, and he was also believed to be either homosexual or bisexual. Later in his life, he developed new themes, including death, which he saw as the deliverance of the soul of man into the immortal realm of beauty. This concept is expressed in the elegy When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (1865) dedicated to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, which had shocked the poet. The event is not explicitly mentioned, but the poem shows the acceptance of death, not just of the abolitionist President but as an event in human life. This attitude reveals Whitman’s evolution from the colourful exaltation of life, energy and vitality of the first edition of Leaves of Grass to the more meditative and delicate tone of his last poems.

Style Whitman was fascinated by Shakespearean plays and music, and his poetry was deeply influenced by the Bible. He rejected regular metre and rhyme in favour of ‘verse paragraphs’ of unequal length with extremely long lines and no fixed metre, modelled on the hymns of the Bible. Most lines are written in the form of statement, privileging enumeration, cataloguing and repetition, with hardly any figures of resemblance. 322

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1819 Whitman was born in New York into a poor family, had little formal education and started work as an office boy.

1842 He was hired as a journalist in New York.

1848 KEY FACT His support of the antislavery cause made him lose his job; he worked in New Orleans for three months, and returned to New York via the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.

1855 KEY FACT He published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in only 725 copies at his own expense.

1862 His brother was wounded at Fredericksburg during the Civil War.

1855

1865

Leaves of Grass (nine editions from 1855 to 1892) p. 324

WORKS

1872 He fell ill and retired to Camden, New Jersey, and devoted his last years to new editions of Leaves of Grass.

Drum Taps

IN ACTION Look and think ▶ Actor Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump

(1994). In the eponymous film, the protagonist experiences the many wonders of American nature as the vicissitudes of his life take him around the whole country.

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is Forrest Gump looking at? 2 Does he look troubled or at peace? 3 Whitman went back to New York from New Orleans following the Mississipi River and visiting the Great Lakes, a long journey across many landscapes. How do you think he may have felt experiencing the vastness of the country?

MIND MAP

American landscape and people

sage and prophet

Walt Whitman

individualism – democarcy – freedom

the common man

celebration of the self

physical love

the Bible

Leaves of Grass

verse paragraphs

a new American Bible

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What themes are present in Whitman’s poetry? 2 Why is Whitman a Transcendentalist at heart? 3 Why is he an experimentalist in style?

Ideas for your map: DEMOCRACY

p. 331

323

AUTHORS AND WORKS Transcendentalism

Leaves of Grass (1855) According to its author, Leaves of Grass was a new American ‘bible’ of democracy. Nine editions of Leaves of Grass were published in Whitman’s lifetime, the first in 1855 (including 12 poems) and the last in 1892, each containing additional poems until it reached a total of more than 300. The volume also includes a group of poems called Drum Taps (1865), added the year the Civil War ended, and poems dedicated to Abraham Lincoln.

T50 For You O Democracy 57 Leaves of Grass

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

Whitman celebrates democracy as the essence of American identity and beauty.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

name • serves • cities • country The speaker promises that he will make the (1)

and the people who live in it one.

All the people will be companions and the (2)

themselves will be like one body in the

of Democracy, the woman that the speaker loves and (4)

(3)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Come1, I will make2 the continent indissoluble, I will make3 the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make4 divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades5, 5 With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees6 along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies7, I will make8 inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks9, By the love of comrades, 10 By the manly10 love of comrades. For you these from me11, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!12 For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What does the speaker love about American nature?

2 Who is the poet writing for?

(From Calamus) 1 Come: Suvvia 2 I will make: renderò 3 I will make: forgerò 4 I will make: creerò

5 comrades: camerati 6 I... trees: Pianterò fratellanze folte come alberi 7 all over the prairies: per tutte le praterie

8 I will make: renderò 9 with... necks: con le braccia dell’una intorno al collo dell’altra

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What two metaphors does the poet use to present the mystical union of marriage and democracy? 2 The poet represents democracy as a living reality: in which terms, and why?

324

10 manly: virile 11 For... me: Per te questi da me 12 to serve you ma femme!: per servirti moglie mia!

DEBATE 3 Is Whitman following any recognisable stanzaic form? Focus on the layout and line length. 4 What is the tone of the extract? Consider also anaphora and repetitions to identify it. Choose from among the following:

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

meditative

enthusiastic

calm PDF

4 Debate the statement in groups.

Democracy cannot survive without the citizens’ active participation in political life. Group A believe that democracy may end if all citizens do not become more active in politics. Group B believe that democracy will continue eternally. Your text explained

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Walt Whitman

T51 I Hear America Singing 58 Leaves of Grass

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

This poem was written by Walt Whitman in 1867. Whitman presents America as a nation of proud individuals all working in their specific areas, from the city to the country. Their songs are the expression of their self-reliance and sense of dignity.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

busy • unique • activities • voices The speaker hears the (1) (2)

of people living in America singing while they are

with their occupations and daily (3)

making them (4)

. Each sings in their own way,

, both during the day and the night.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

I hear America singing, the varied carols1 I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe2 and strong, The carpenter3 singing his as he measures his plank or beam4, The mason5 singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, 5 The boatman singing what belongs to him6 in his boat, the deckhand7 singing on the steamboat deck, 8 The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench , the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing9 or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, 10 The day what belongs to the day—at night the party10 of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

1 carols: canzoni (un ‘carol‘ è un canto di origine medievale) 2 his … blithe: la sua (canzone) come dovrebbe essere allegra

3 carpenter: falegname 4 plank or beam: asse o trave 5 mason: muratore 6 what … him: (la canzone) che gli è propria

ANALYSE

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is the song joyful or sorrowful?

2 Are the activities manual or intellectual, domestic or complex?

3 What characterises all their songs?

7 deckhand: mozzo 8 bench: banco di lavoro 9 sewing: che cuce 10 the party: la compagnia

INTERPRET

3 Answer the questions.

4 What traits of Transcendentalism can you see in the extract?

1 ‘Singing’ and ‘carols’ are associated with men’s and women’s labour. What idea do they convey? Choose all the correct options:

Work creative 5 Imagine you want to celebrate the typical ‘Americanness’ of today’s US. How different would your song be?

the pride in their role

self-reliance

fear of the unknown

defiance of rules

joy at creating a nation 2 The poem proceeds through accumulation and parallelisms: what is the overall effect? Choose from among the following: emotion

monotony

emphasis

rhythm

3 What is the purpose of the joyful choir at the end of the poem?

PDF

Your text explained

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325

THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS Transcendentalism LEARNING DIGITAL E mily Dickinson and Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson PPT

Emily Dickinson

PDF

An eye for flowers

PDF

DT40 Me, change! DT41 I tie my Hat

IN ACTION Web quest

The immortality of the soul

The five great world religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism — all believe in some version of a ‘self’ or ‘soul’ which survives death, but this survival is seen in very different ways. 1 Search the web to find out how different their views are, and present to the class the view that appeals to you the most.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Profile Emily grew up as a bright girl with an intense emotional life of varied moods, emotions and mental states. She wrote her poems for herself or for those she loved and her independence of mind manifested itself early. Puritanism and Transcendentalism ( p. 314) had a great influence on her poetry. On the one hand, Puritanism allowed her to remain grounded in her faith in God, on the other, Transcendentalism helped her to explore ‘new frontiers’ in her faith and beliefs, question dogmas and develop her personality and creativity. Her sister found her poems in hand-bound packets after Emily’s death, and the early collections were ‘amended’ to make her verse appear ordinary. They were restored as collected poems only in the 1955 edition by Thomas H. Johnson. The most important influences on her art were the Bible, William Shakespeare, and the Metaphysical poets. Her brief poems are rich in deeply personal meditations, simple in expression and remarkable for their original use of figurative language and punctuation.

Themes Dickinson wrote about grief, love, death, loss, affection, longing and God. She had a special ability to capture negative moods – sometimes labelled by critics as ‘depressive experiences‘ – and transform them into a metaphor for her everlasting concern about death and immortality.

▲ A scene from the TV series (2019–21) dedicated to Emily Dickinson’s life

326

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1830 Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into an extremely prominent New England family.

1850 She may have begun to write poems.

1858 She met the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who became her closest friend for a short while before his death.

1862 She sent four poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an important man of letters, who advised her not to publish them.

1864 KEY FACT She decided to live a secluded life in her secondfloor bedroom, even though she had extensive correspondence with people outside.

1865 She usually dressed in white, maybe as a symbol of her search for the absolute.

1890

Poems by Emily Dickinson

WORKS

1891

Poems: Second Series

1894

The Letters

1955

Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson p. 328

1895

Poems: Third Series

IN ACTION Across time and space

The reality

The Truth the Dead Know

of death

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, refusing the stiff procession to the grave, letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. […] And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Anne Sexton (1928–1974), an American poet, was greatly influenced by Dickinson but their views of death are utterly different.

2 Answer the questions 1 Who is the poem dedicated to? 2 Does the speaker accept death easily? 3 How does she imagine the tombs of the dead? 4 Do you think that Sexton believes in an afterlife as Dickinson did?

Language and style The language of Dickinson’s poems incorporates New England slang, religious and scientific terminology, and out-of-date words. Her unconventional style with frequent use of dashes, capitalisation of nouns, unusual rhymes and metres and original metaphors have contributed to her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. What is now known as her characteristic ‘dash’ is actually a rich variety of pen markings; they are either long or short, sometimes vertical, as if to indicate musical phrasing. The regular form that she most often employed is the ballad stanza, but usually with an ABAB rhyming scheme. MIND MAP

intense emotional life

Emily Dickinson

independent mind

Puritanism vs Transcendentalism

grief – love – death – immortality – God

original language and punctuation

the dash

ballad stanza

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions

3 Which influences can be traced in her poetry?

1 What kind of life did Emily Dickinson live?

4 What are the main themes of her poems?

2 What did she think of life?

5 Why is her style unconventional?

Ideas for your map: IMMORTALITY

p. 331

327

AUTHORS AND WORKS Transcendentalism LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T52 ‘Hope‘ is the thing with feathers 59 Complete Poems

In this poem, one of the most popular of Dickinson’s, an abstract concept, Hope, is presented metaphorically as a little bird, undefeated and resilient to all hardships, and as the essence of human nature itself.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. warms • bird • return • nest

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

whose (2)

Hope is presented as a little (1) storm and its song (3) in (4)

is the soul. It is there in the

hearts in all parts of the world, without ever asking anything

Now read the poem and check your answers.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers − That perches1 in the soul − And sings the tune without the words − And never stops − at all − 5

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

And sweetest − in the Gale − is heard − And sore must be the storm − That could abash2 the little Bird That kept so many warm −

1 What does hope offer?

I’ve heard it in the chillest land − And on the strangest Sea − Yet − never − in Extremity, It asked a crumb − of me.

2 What are crumbs for birds?

(Poem 314) 1 perches: sta appollaiato 2 abash: turbare, abbattere

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 When is Hope identified as a bird? 2 What is unusual in the bird metaphor that extends throughout the poem? 3 What does the personification of the verb ‘abash’ add to the bird metaphor? 4 Anaphora, capitalisation and dashes are typical of Dickinson’s style; focus on the dashes within the lines. What effect do they add to the words? INTERPRET 4 Would you define Dickinson’s art lyrical, or ‘objective’, or a mix of the two?

▲ Emily Dickinson’s house, now a museum, at Amherst, Massachussets PDF

328

The Victorian Age – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

Emily Dickinson

T53 Because I could not stop for Death 60 Complete Poems

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

The speaker drives off on a most unusual carriage, Death’s, to her last and eternal house, her grave, where her immortal soul will live eternally while all her cares and her own body are left behind.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. sets • ground • Immortality • sun • eternally • carriage

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

, where also (2)

Death kindly stops to pick up the speaker in his (1)

sits.

They drive off, passing a school during the children’s break and fields of grain where the sun (3)

. The speaker then says that actually it is the (4)

They pass by a house that just rises out of the (5) the speaker (6)

that passes them.

, and it is the house where Death and

live.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Does the speaker look for death or just accept him when he comes? 2 What does the paradox of death and immortality sitting together mean? Consider the last word of the poem, too. 3 What does the speaker have to leave behind? 4 What images of death are present in the poem? 5 Is the atmosphere of the poem tragic or peaceful? Why? 6 What examples of unusual capitalisations and dashes are present in the poem? INTERPRET 4 The speaker does not desire death but goes on Death’s carriage with no lament or fear when he stops to claim her. Do you think her reaction is convincing? Why?/Why not? PDF

Your text explained Digital resources, Study Booster

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is death a man or a woman?

We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove 10 At Recess1 – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun – Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill2 – 15 For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle3 – We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – 20 The Cornice – in the Ground – Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity – (Poem 712) 1 strove/At Recess: si davano da fare all’intervallo

2 The Dews… Chill: la rugiada si posò rabbrividente e gelida

2 Are these ordinary clothes for life?

3 Is this a proper house, or a grave?

4 What does Death mean to the speaker? 3 Gossamer…Tulle: garza, la mia veste – la mia stola – solo tulle

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5 THE VICTORIAN AGE

KEY WORDS THINKING SKILLS

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share 1 Work in pairs and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Agree on a short definition for each. 2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words for each point, or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class or with a classmate. Describe 1 The British Empire extended over several continents. 2 Utilitarianism and Social Darwinism were two of the key ideas of the age. 3 There were many literary movements in the Victorian Age. 4 The dramatic monologue was the union of the conventions of drama, lyric and fiction. 5 Wilde’s comedies of manners were highly popular in his time. 6 Dickinson’s poems are highly original in tone and style. 7 Hawthorne’s works reflect both the Puritan mentality and Transcendentalist views. Explain 1 Aestheticism and Decadentism rejected the Victorian view of art and morality. 2 Dickens’ social novels show his concern for the evils of his time. 3 Fate, chance and the environment determine the life of characters in Hardy’s novels. 4 Melville combined symbolism and realism in Moby Dick. Justify 1 Social reforms were fundamental to grant society peace and growth in the Victorian age. 2 The novel was the most popular form of the Victorian Age. 3 Victorian drama flourished thanks to foreign influences. 4 George Eliot’s works present her unconventional views of marriage and love. Compare 1 The Early and Late Victorian novelists related to society in different ways. 2 Transcendentalists and Anti-Transcendentalists had different views of the nature of man. Assess 1 The American Civil War brought slavery and inequality to an end in the USA. 2 The Brontë sisters and George Eliot challenged the Victorian mentality much more than other writers of the time. 3 Oscar Wilde’s works reflect the contradictions of his personality and life.

STORYTELLING

3 Imagine the end of Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist in a much darker tone: write one or two paragraphs that describe your ‘unhappy ending’ and a short dialogue between Oliver and a character of your choice.

WRITING

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay highlighting similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • The many genres in Victorian fiction • Differences between the social/humanitarian novel and the Aesthetic novel • The birth of national literature in the USA • The varieties of forms in poetry

330

IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL

THE VICTORIAN AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

poverty / segregation

art / love / nature

empire

crime / sin / the double

childhood / education

immortality / introspection

reforms / progress / democracy

realism / romance

sustainability

marriage / women emancipation

social issues / pollution

PROJECT 1 Develop your project about the idea of art. Step 1

Read this short description of ‘art’ in the Victorian Age:

By the mid-18thcentury the development of academies for painting and sculpture established a sense that these media were ‘art’ and therefore separate from such forms of creativity as pottery, sewing or weaving. This rigid distinction is being questioned today. Step 2 Focus on the idea of ‘art’, and discuss what it represents for you and how people are expected to relate to it in today’s world. Step 3

Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view.

2 Use the suggestions in the map below to talk about art for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English Veronica Veronese (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872)

French À rebours, Les Parnassiens (Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884) Art exists only to create beauty.

German Duino Elegies (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1923) The reconciliation of art and life.

Spanish La cuestión palpitante (Emilia Pardo Bazán, 1883–84) Overcoming the division between art and science.

Art The Lady of Shalott (John Waterhouse, 1888)

Sensuality in art

The Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood, Art for Art’s sake

Italian Il Piacere (Gabriele D’Annunzio, 1889) Andrea Sperelli ‘s search for pleasure.

Greek Plato’s and Aristotles’ view of art.

Latin Ars Poetica (Horace) The affinity between poetry and painting.

Philosophy The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872) The dual nature of art. 331

THE MODERN AGE (1901–1945) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

THINKING ROUTINE

Experimentation in science and art

1 Experimentation happens in both the arts and sciences. Look at the two images. What do they make you think of and feel? Add more words if you want to. change • danger • novelty • shock • rejection • admiration • courage • unconventionality 2 Look at the images and answer the questions. The atomic bomb 1 What part of the planet was the picture taken from? 2 What shape has the atomic explosion created? 3 How big is it? 4 Is scientific research and experimentation always a good thing in your opinion? Les Demoiselles D’Avignon 5 Which figure(s) recall(s) Egyptian and which African art? 6 Are the female bodies painted as delicate and soft? 7 Are there many colours in the painting? 8 When it was first viewed, the painting was shocking to viewers with its daring experimentation. What is your feeling about it? Which is which? 3 What is good experimentation in science and art? 1

searching for vaccines

creating new sources of energy

cloning human beings

finding new forms of expression

defying expected conventions

shocking observers for the sake of it

Key words • experimentation (science) = the process of performing a scientific procedure, especially in a laboratory, to determine something • experimentation (arts) = the action or process of trying out new ideas, methods, or activities 332

▲ The atomic bomb, World War II (August 1945) The mushroom of an atomic bomb seen from above the planet. Near the end of WWII both the USA and the USSR were working on the realisation of the atomic bomb. Project Manhattan, led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer, successfully detonated the Trinity bomb in New Mexico, USA. The American government launched the first atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, and Nagasaki on 8th August.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping into texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts by authors In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ Pablo Picasso,

Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907) The work purposefully combined the traditional theme of female nude painting with the much more scandalous reality of a brothel, which is referred to in the work’s title – a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels. The five nudes and the still life represented without perspective marked the beginning of Cubism.

Ideas for your map: EXPERIMENTATION

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333

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Key Facts An age of wars

LEARNING DIGITAL

The UK and Europe

• World War I • World War II PPT

The Modern Age: History and Society

PDF

• History narrated: An age of wars ( Digital resources, Study Booster) • Royal dynasties: The Hanoverians; The House of Windsor • From Russia to the USSR, from Lenin to Stalin (1917-53)

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1-4) to its definition (a-d). 1

dominion

Home Rule

New Deal

Hoovervilles

a the measures taken to fight depression in the USA b decrepit shantytowns c a country that used to be part of the British Empire d self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1901-1914

1914-1918

THE EDWARDIAN AGE

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

After World War I, the Edwardian Age was seen as a sort of Golden Age; there was peace, interest in the arts and Edward VII (1901-1910) was presented as a peacemaker. There were many social reforms concerning working conditions and hours, education, social security (some compensation for accidents was granted with the Compensation Act of 1906, and the pension system first came into being with the Old-Age Pensions Act of 1908). The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in the USA in 1873, and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst, asked for women’s suffrage. The Trade Unions Congress directed their support to the Labour Party, founded in 1906.

The long-term causes of the war were nationalism, imperialism, militarism, the economic rivalries among the European powers and the system of alliances. The Triple Entente originated from the alliances between Russia, France and the United Kingdom, while the Central Powers originated from the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo in 1914 by a Serbian nationalist created the diplomatic crisis that ultimately led to the conflict. Italy stayed out of the war until 1915, when it joined the Triple Entente. Death by shellfire and gas attacks was a constant risk for the soldiers in the trenches along the Western Front, and the Great War was also a total war: civilians were also targeted. In 1918, the USSR withdrew from the conflict after Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but the USA dealt the ultimate blow to the exhausted forces of Germany.

The USA 1920s THE ROARING TWENTIES The ‘Roaring Twenties’ was a period of economic growth: new technologies – such as moving pictures, the radio, automobiles, in particular Ford Model T – became accessible to a large part of the population. The traditional values of rural America were challenged. Especially with the young, the consumer society was associated with artistic and cultural dynamism and a glamorous lifestyle. With the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, women were guaranteed the right to vote in 1920. However, these changes led to conflicts: city-dwellers vs small-town residents, blacks vs whites, ‘new women’ vs supporters of family values. With Prohibition, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution (1919) banned the manufacture and sale of ‘intoxicating liquors’. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 ended the era; the economy collapsed and the Great Depression began. 334

The Modern Age – Key Facts

1918-1934 THE INTERWAR YEARS The armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918, and the peace treaty was signed at Versailles in June 1919. The war brought an end to centuries of dynastic rule by the Kaiser in Germany, the Tzar in Russia and the Emperor and Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and set the stage for the eventual collapse of the British Empire. In 1926, the Imperial Conference recognised the dominions as ‘autonomous Communities within the British Empire’. In 1931, the Statute of Westminster gave complete legislative power to the dominions, making them independent members of what was then called the British Commonwealth. After the Second World War the dominions became known as Commonwealth realms. The severe conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles on Germany caused great resentment among the Germans and planted the seeds of World War II. A worldwide League of Nations was formed to keep peace. However, its diplomacy was weak or ineffective in several crises.

1939-45

1945

WORLD WAR II

THE YALTA AND POTSDAM CONFERENCES

Adolf Hitler’s idea of the superiority of the Aryan race led to the rise in anti-Semitism, to the need to defend Aryan Lebensraum (the living space for Germans) and the annexation policy that he started with the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938. After signing the non-aggression pact with the USSR, he invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, thus beginning the Second World War. Two coalitions were formed, the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) which fought over three main theatres (Europe, North Africa and the Pacific). Most of Europe was occupied between 1939 and 1941; only Great Britain, protected by the English Channel and the Royal Navy, stood free. The USA entered the conflict as a result of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, in the Pacific, in 1941. The landing of American troops in Sicily in 1943 and the D-Day in Normandy in 1944 led to the final collapse of Germany. In 1945, Berlin was occupied by Soviet troops and the USA struck Japan dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Yalta, in February 1945, Stalin for the USSR, President Roosevelt for the USA and Winston Churchill for Great Britain agreed to split Germany into four zones of occupation, and to allow free elections in Eastern European countries (though they were never held as these nations fell under the influence of the USSR). After Germany was defeated, at the conference of Potsdam, in July 1945, most of the conditions set in Yalta were confirmed. However, the tensions between the USSR and the USA became apparent and the Cold War started dominating the post-war period.

1929-1940s THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL On Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929, the stock market crashed, causing the Great Depression. With banks failing and businesses closing, more than 15 million Americans (one-quarter of the workforce) were completely out of work. After the Dust Bowl – a series of storms that devastated the Great Plains – struck the prairies causing crops to die, cotton farmers, the ‘Okies’, were made homeless and migrated to California. President Herbert Hoover (1929-33) underestimated the crisis; poverty was widespread and ‘Hoovervilles’ for the most miserable sprang up around the country. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and offered Americans a New Deal with the Emergency Banking Bill, which restored the public’s faith in the banking industry, the Civil Conservation, which sent three million people to work in the forests, and the Works Progress Administration, which employed more than 8.5 million people to build infrastructures.

Ideas for your map: WAR/INDEPENDENCE

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RIGHTS FOR ALL

Women’s suffrage in the 20th century

AGENDA 2030

The suffrage movement, which demanded the right to vote for women, encompassed women and men with a wide range of views and from many social classes.

▲ Emmeline Pankhurst during a public speaking

In Britain, the suffragettes were led by English political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The group identified as independent from political parties and became famous for its ‘deeds, not words‘. Its policy was often aggressive, with members smashing windows and assaulting police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, during which they went on hunger strikes. Throughout the world, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was established in the United States in 1873, also campaigned for women’s suffrage, in addition to ameliorating the condition of prostitutes. Australia enfranchised white women in 1902, but denied aboriginal women the vote until 1962. Finland was the first European state to grant women the right to vote and also to be elected in 1905. Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women in the interwar period, including Canada (1917), Britain and Germany (1918), Austria and the Netherlands (1919) and the United States (1920) with the 19th Amendment. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 21 stated that elections were to be ‘by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures‘. The Convention on the Political Rights of Women of 1954 enshrined the equal rights of women to vote, hold office, and access public services as set out by national laws.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who were Emmeline Pankhurst‘s suffragettes? 2 Which other organisation promoted universal suffrage? 3 When was universal suffrage granted in the UK and the USA, and when did it gain international recognition?

336

The Modern Age

WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to find detailed information about movements of women’s emancipation concerning the right to vote and to be elected in a country of your choice. Compare the results of your search to the legislation and the path that brought about equal rights in your country, and discuss the reasons for differences/similarities.

Ideas for your map: HUMAN RIGHTS

p. 437

The laws that took rights away

AGENDA 2030

The law grants civic and political rights, but these same rights can be denied by law itself. The people who suffered the most from the use of the law against them in 20th-century history were the Jews, in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Before their physical extermination in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, German Jews were deprived of all their rights and persecuted as soon as the Nazis came into power in 1933. The path to extermination began under the eyes of everybody, with laws approved by the Bundestag, the German Parliament. Italy had racial laws approved under Fascist government, too. The Leggi Razziali were promulgated from 1938 to 1943.

▲ An arrival at the extermination camp of Birkenau

▲ Jewish prisoners in the extermination camp of Buchenwald

The Nazis saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the disabled as a serious biological threat to the purity of the ‘German (Aryan) Race’. Nazi propaganda blamed Jews for Germany’s economic depression and the country’s defeat in World War I. In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life. In early April 1933, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jews second-class citizens. The Nuremberg laws of 1935 defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation (being a Jew) of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further; they could not attend public schools, go to theatres, cinemas, or vacation resorts, live or even walk in certain sections of German cities. In addition, between 1937 and 1939, the Nazis either openly took control of Jewish businesses and properties or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices. The Racial Laws in Italy were to enforce racial discrimination and segregation. The first Regio Decreto of 1938 restricted the civil rights of Italian Jews, banned any book written by Jewish authors, and excluded Jews from public office and higher education. Successive laws deprived them of their possessions, limited their mobility and imprisoned them. CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How did the Nazis justify the persecution of the Jews? 2 Which civic and political rights were the Jews deprived of between 1933 and 1939?

PROJECT 2 Your project investigates recent history to see how the law has been used against a minority/a people/a specific group to deprive them of their civic and/or political rights.

3 How were the Jews identified according to the Nuremberg laws? 4 What did the Italian Racial laws establish?

Ideas for your map: HUMAN RIGHTS

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL T ransitional and Modernist novelists PPT

The Modern Age: Literature and Culture

PDF

The early 20th century avant-garde movements

PDF

•H enry James, The Portrait of a Lady DT42 Like an angel beside my bed • David Herbert Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover DT43 Trevershall The Sci-Fi heritage • Herber George Wells, The War of the Worlds DT44 The coming of the Martians • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World DT45 The Bokanovsky’s process

Modernism: an age of experimentation The first half of the 20th century was an age of experimentation, characterised by a break with tradition and authority, the reaction against Victorian culture and aesthetic, and the search for new forms of expression. The innovations in arts between the 1910s and 1960s, such as the mythical method or the stream of consciousness in literature, atonality in music, and many new movements in the visual arts – Art Nouveau, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism in the first two decades of the century – go under the name of Modernism. Paris was the centre of artistic life from the 1910s to the 1940s. Art Déco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials to represent luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress. Among the artists gathering in Paris were Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Giorgio De Chirico, George Braque and Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish-born painter whose elegant style gives her paintings of decadent celebrities a typical Art Déco appeal. Gertrude Stein, an American expatriate, art collector and mentor, opened her house (at 27 rue de Fleurus) to these artists and to the ‘Lost Generation’ of American literati (including Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald).

Fiction in the Modern Age Modernist novelists experimented with new forms and tried to explore the mental processes in the human mind. This development was preceded by numerous attempts at renovation of both the language and form of the novel.

The Transitional novelists Most Edwardian novelists still believed that society could be improved and that art could contribute to its development, but they also experimented with new modes of expression. Science fiction novels by Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and Men Like Gods (1923), captured the optimistic conviction that science and technology would transform the world in the century ahead for the better. Other writers focused on the difficult relationship with the British colonial Empire. The difficulties of integration in India were one of the aspects explored by Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970 p. 356) in A Passage to India (1924). His Aspects of the Novel (1927) was a major contribution to the definition of modern narration concerning plot, characterisation, point of view and narrator, but his style was traditional, with clear dialogues and descriptions sometimes full of symbolism. The same interest for British colonialism characterises Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad (1857– 1924 p. 352); a British coloniser discovers his dark mysterious inner self when faced with the reality of the ‘Dark Continent‘, Africa, while travelling up the river Congo into its ‘heart of darkness’. Conrad’s style is not Modernist, but highly innovative. He used flashbacks, an unreliable narrator, and symbolism in his investigation of subjective perception. ▲ Tamara de Lempicka, Girl with Gloves (1929) 338

The Modern Age – Modernism: an age of experimentation

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1–5) to its definition (a–e). 1

atonality

Primitivism

Dionysian spirit

Apollonian spirit

slip of the tongue

a what is harmony, progress, clarity, logic and individuality b music without a central key, where all the notes work independently c something said by accident while meaning to say something different d a belief in the superiority of life and man in nature against those in civilisation e what is disorder, intoxication, emotion, ecstasy and unity Web quest

A slip of the tongue Sigmund Freud gave great importance to slips of the tongues (‘Freudian slip’ as it was called after him) as revelatory of hidden desires and motivations, and modern studies have proved that they can be induced by anxiety and tension.

Acute psychological inquiry characterised the works of Henry James (1843–1916) and David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930). In Henry James’ novels the narrative is chronological but focused on the personal reactions, thoughts and memories of the characters. In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), the story of Isabel Archer, a young American woman in Europe, James explores the themes of freedom and responsibility in a contrast between the Old and New Worlds. David Herbert Lawrence studied the hidden activity of the unconscious, particularly on the theme of sex, which he considered a vital force and a kind of religion.

The Modernist novelists The major European Modernists were James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello. Their works showed the influence of many new original contributions in art, philosophy and science: primitivism, Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian spirits, the new science of psychology of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, Albert Einstein‘s theory of relativity and the reflections concerning time in the philosophy of William James (the writer’s brother) and Henri Bergson. Major influences • Primitivism represented the simplification and abstraction of form, which was to become one of the main characteristics of Modernism, and it was the expression of all that civilised man had to supress in order to enter into a contract with society. Novelists also agreed with Nietzsche’s analysis of the Apollonian (from graceful god Apollos) and the Dionysian spirits (from the god of wine and euphoria Dionisius) in his work The Birth of the Tragedy (1872) that art had degenerated because it was too concerned with the rules of form, and not enough with the creative energies that lie underneath the surface. It is that exploration of what is underneath the surface that the Modernists were so interested in: disintegration, madness, suicide, sexual depravity, impotence, morbidity, deception. The city became the cemetery for the lost souls of men under the lens of the Modernists. • Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, first developed his theories concerning the human self in his essay, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). In his work, Freud introduced the theory of the unconscious: fantasies, dreams and slips of the tongue are external manifestations of unconscious motives. He also developed the theory of the libido; the unconscious (Id or Eros) corresponds to energy and the Ego to what tries to limit and control the

2 Search the web for examples of people speaking in public (politicians, artists, ordinary people) and making these verbal mistakes. Choose a few and explain what may cause them (anxiety, unconscious thoughts, etc.).

▲ Sigmund Freud ▲ Poster of the 2019 BBC TV mini series based on George Wells’ novel

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Id. His disciple, Carl Jung (1875–1961) explored the nature of the irrational self and identified the instinctive, universal patterns of a collective unconscious which manifest themselves in dreams, visions and fantasies and are expressed in myths, religious concepts, fairy tales and works of art.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

• Albert Einstein (1879–1955) with his theory of general relativity in 1919 generated enormous interest when he claimed that the universe is not three, but four-dimensional, with three spatial dimensions and one of time, and that time is relative, or that time and space are not as they appear to ordinary perception. • William James (1842–1910) stated in his Principles of Psychology (1890) that consciousness ‘is not divided up in bits [... but] flows‘ like a river or a stream. Hence ‘let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness‘, which generated the label stream-of-consciousness novel. For Henri Bergson (1859–1941), a French philosopher, time is not only mathematical, measurable and always identical, but it exists as pure time, or durée (duration), in the mind. There, all moments of time coexist and mix. MIND MAP

Fiction in the Modern Age (1)

Transitional novelists

Science Fiction

British Empire

H.G. Wells, The Time Machine/ The War of the Worlds

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

psychological enquiry

Modernist novelists

primitivism – simplification and abstraction

F. Nietzsche’s Apollonian – Dionysian spirits

H. James, The Portrait of a Lady

S. Freud – unconscious – libido

A. Einstein – theory of relativity

W. James – consciousness

H. Bergson – pure time vs duration

C. G. Jung – irrational self – collective unconscious

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness

CHECK OUT 1 Choose all the correct alternatives, and use your notes to write a short summary about Modernism.

Modernism: (1) break from / respect for tradition, (2) realist / abstract representation in art, (3) continuity with / break from traditional forms, (4) acceptance of / reaction against the Victorian culture and aesthetic, (5) local / cosmopolitan; (6) disillusion / hope brought by the two World Wars and the Great Depression, growing (7) alienation / prosperity of the individual in the industrialised world.

Main features: interest in (1) refined forms of expressions / primitivism, (2) elaborated and representational / abstract and simplified form; the desire to renew art by (3) exploring / excluding themes such as disintegration and morbidity in line with (4) Schopenhauer’s / Nietzsche’s philosophy.

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Major influences: theory of the (1) unconscious / Super Ego and of the (2) libido / power of the will by Sigmund Freud and of the (3) personal / collective unconscious of Carl Jung as a major influence on Modernist (4) narrative techniques / choices of themes. A new theory of (5) time / space seen as (6) relative / fixed (see Einstein’s theory of relativity) and also as (7) duration / immeasurable, with the (8) coexistence / separation of time present, past and future in the mind (see (9) Hegel’s / Bergson’s theory of the consciousness. 2 Answer the questions. 1 How did the Edwardians react to the changes of the early 20th century? 2 Who was the most popular writer of the Edwardian era? 3 What characterised the style of Forster’s novels? 4 How did Conrad contribute to the transformation of the novel? 5 Which writers were interested in psychology, though not in the perspective of the Modernist writers?

Ideas for your map: PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

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Stream-of-consciousness fiction LEARNING DIGITAL S tream-of-consciousness fiction

Stream-of-consciousness fiction is concerned with that area which is beyond communication. The importance attributed to the mind and to its unconscious is visible in the survey of the inner space of the human mind. What matters is not what is immediate and visible (words, gestures, actions, decisions, feelings, etc.), but what lies below the surface, in the inaccessible regions of the mental process at work. To discover this hidden world, the novelist must explore what initiates or constitutes the mental process (e.g. memories, dreams, sensations, intuitions, etc.) and analyse how this process works (i.e. through the use of symbols, associations of ideas, etc.). The idea of relativity favoured a new perception of space and time, for example in early Cubist works by Pablo Picasso that simultaneously portrayed all sides of his subjects. The new technique for the description of the flowing mind was the interior monologue, most frequently an association of free indirect thought and direct thought. In Marcel Proust’s (1871– 1922) In Search of Lost Time (published in seven volumes from 1913 to 1927) the surface level of the descriptions coming from Ego, that is, narcissism, is very frequently interrupted in Marcel, the author’s self-projection, by outbursts from the Id, Eros or libido. In James Joyce’s (1882–1941 p. 360) Ulysses (1922) the narrator, following Freudian teaching, accepts the primacy of the kingdom of Eros, a whole continent based on a perpetual flux ignoring limitations and obstacles. Joyce disregarded syntax and punctuation to reproduce the inner workings of the mind, while Virginia Woolf (1882–1941 p. 366) provided more rational links for the associations of ideas and supported the narrative with rich symbolism.

IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to disregard = ignorare / disprezzare

3 to advocate = propugnare / rifiutare

2 to revolve = risolvere / ruotare

4 to condition = influenzare / determinare

Across time and space

Proust’s In Search of Lost Time A sensory impression, such as the taste of the madeleine dipped in tea in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1906–22), is a moment of sudden and inexplicable pleasure from a remote past. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory […]. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it? […] And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray […] when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea.

▲ Marcel Proust

2 Answer the questions. 1 How does the recollection take place? Put the steps into the correct order (1–3). an intense pleasure the sensory impression given by the taste in the mouth the recollection 2 The confusion of life vanishes with the taste of a madeleine and tea. Have you ever had a similar experience? 341

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Woolf was the leader of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists which flourished in the early years of the 20th century. Most of its members lived in Bloomsbury – in the squares and streets east of London’s Tottenham Court Road. The painters and art critics of the group – Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant – were the first of these friends to come to public attention. Other writers revolved around the group in the name of their friendship with Virginia Woolf, among whom were the American expatriate Thomas S. Eliot (1888–1965 p. 394), and the New Zealand-born master of the short story, Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923 p. 378). With The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922), Mansfield confirmed her gift of portraying psychological conflict. Her short stories reveal the influence of Anton Chekhov in the accuracy and obliqueness of narration. George Orwell (1903–50 p. 382), another important writer of this period, did not identify ▲ Poster of the 2020 TV series based with the complexities of Modernist fiction and on Aldous Huxley’s novel advocated instead a literature of social and political commitment written in a realistic style. His dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) shows his critical view of totalitarianism, in particular Stalin’s. Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894–1963), an English writer and philosopher, also experimented with the dystopian novel with Brave New World (1932), a frightening vision of the future where humans are created using a technique that resembles human cloning. In their infancy each individual is then conditioned to belong to one social class for the rest of their lives. Narcissism and consumerism dominate this world, with the solitary exception of the ‘Savage’, a man who has been brought up in a reservation and who rebels in vain against this reduced reality, thanks to the inspirational words of William Shakespeare.

▶ Some of the members of the Bloomsbury Group. Left to right: Ottoline Morrell, Aldous Huxley, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (1915).

342

The Modern Age – Stream-of-consciousness fiction

MIND MAP

stream-of-consciousness fiction

Fiction in the Modern Age (2)

Bloomsbury Group – London

dystopian novel

human mind beyond communication

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

interior monologue

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Marcel Proust – James Joyce – Virginia Woolf – Katherine Mansfield

▶ Pudam volor aut modit odit odi

saepe perum eos modit fugiata dolore poratios sinctus dem. Tem harum quiatestio blacitem. Ditatumque sunto et pro in ped ut fugiae quias

▶ Edward Hopper,

Nighthawks (1942)

CHECK OUT 1 Choose all the correct alternatives, and then use your notes to write a short summary.

Stream-of-consciousness fiction: concerned with (1) that area which is beyond communication / the ‘rational communicable’ area; analysis of (2) conscious decisions / memories / dreams / important events / intuitions through use of (3) symbols / comments by the narrator / associations of ideas; main technique (4) interior / dramatic monologue, a combination of free (5) indirect thought / speech and direct thought.

Main Modernist novelists: • James Joyce, (6) abrupt / gradual shift from thought to thought in (7) grammatically correct / incorrect language. • Virginia Woolf, (8) allegory / symbolism to support the narrative; (9) founder / leader of the Bloomsbury Group, association of artists and critics.

Non-Modernist writers: • George Orwell, author of (10) politically / emotionally committed novels depicting a (11) utopian / dystopian reality. • Aldous Leonard Huxley, author of the dystopian novel Brave New World with the anticipation of (12) human voyages into space / cloning and mental conditioning.

Ideas for your map: CONSCIOUSNESS

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THE ARTS

Ever-changing arts The Salon des Refusés, an exhibition of artworks rejected by the Paris Salon, held annually by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, opened in Paris in 1863. It was the very first time the term avant-garde was used in relation to the arts, and it marked the beginning of a cultural revolution. Between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, avant-garde movements marked a change in the arts in the direction of innovations in new forms and subject matter. Avantgarde was often, if not always, shocking and controversial. Nowadays the works of such artists as Henry Matisse, Vassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall are recognised as distinctive innovations in artistic form.

Dance (1910) by Henri Matisse Henri Matisse was the leader of the Fauvists, a movement that emphasised strong colour over representational or realistic values. Dance shows five dancing figures holding hands in a circle while they dance against a simplified background.

Henri Matisse’s palette: Flake White, Chrome Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Yellow Ochre, Scarlet Lake, Vermilion, Emerald Green, Viridian Green, French Ultramarine, Cobalt Violet, Ivory Black.

Blue Horses (1911) by Franz Marc Together with Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc was a founding member of The Blue Rider, a German Expressionist group that wanted to express a spiritual dimension in painting. Blue Horses represents three blue horses looking down against a background of red hills. Marc considered blue as a symbol for masculinity and spirituality, and the curved silhouettes of the animals represent beauty in its purest form. 344

The Modern Age

Paris Through the Window (1913) by Marc Chagall

Woman with a Book (1932) by Pablo Picasso

Chagall used some of the wild, bright colours of the Fauves, while triangles and rectangles organise the space in Cubist fashion. Like the Surrealists, Chagall painted objects realistically, but combined them in unusual or nonsensical ways. The Januslike figure represents Chagall’s divided love for and identification with Paris, the city of modernity and also ‘the city of elation’, and Vitebsk, his native village. His contrasting moods of seriousness and joy are highlighted by the double-faced figure.

In Pablo Picasso’s career there were many distinct periods: the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912) and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919). This portrait is an example of Synthetic Cubism, which is characterised by bright colours and simpler lines and shapes. The main influence for the pose of the sitter was Dominique Ingres’s portrait Madame Moitessier, an example of neo-classical style, while the bright palette of vivid colours and the decorative motif of the flowers on the woman’s dress are typical of Henry Matisse’s Fauvist art.

THINKING ROUTINE 1 Look at the paintings and answer the questions. Dance

Paris through the Window

1 What colours are present in the painting? Which is dominant?

5 Which elements in the painting are nonsensical?

2 What emotions do the dancing nudes holding hands evoke?

6 Is there a dominant geometrical figure in the painting?

Blue Horses

Woman with a Book

3 Which figures take up most of the painting, and what type of form did the painter use to represent them?

7 Find all the circular lines (circles, ovals and arcs) and the straight lines in the painting. Where are most circular lines to be found?

4 How does the painter use the blue colour?

8 What makes the female figure look beautiful?

Web quest 2 Search the web to find the painting that your teacher will assign to you (you may have studied a few of them in Art lessons), and present it to the class. Identify its formal elements and significance.

Ideas for your map: ART/EXPERIMENTATION

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FILMS FOR THOUGHT

The world of the future The Modern Age was really born in the first half of the 20th century, with its burden of alienation and industrialisation. Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s masterpiece (1927), prophesied the towers of the modern metropolis, with thousands of workers employed on its construction and its inevitable collapse. The same metropolitan setting dominates in an iconic sci-fi film, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (1982), which was followed by the sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Their scenario of a futuristic metropolis in dark colours and a sombre atmosphere were to become modern classics. Charlie Chaplin, the fabulous interpreter of silent comic films with the figure of the Little Tramp, showed in his Modern Times (1936) the dehumanising effects of automation in factories, and how absurdly frantic modern life is. More recently The Road (2009), the adaptation of the eponymous novel by Cormac McCarthy ( p. 520), showed the very end of the world, with only few survivors in a desolate grey landscape, with nothing left of what human civilisation built in its great cities.

Metropolis (1927)

Modern Times (1936)

346

The Modern Age

Blade Runner (1982)

READ, WATCH AND THINK

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

1 Search the web for some clips of the films. Here are some suggestions: Metropolis 1 The city of Metropolis is presented in its futuristic skyline. Modern Times 2 In the factory scene the Little Tramp unsuccessfully tries to keep pace with the assembly line. Blade Runner 3 The opening scene shows the boundless dark city where humans and replicants in hiding coexist. Blade Runner 2049 4 K, a detective and a replicant, gives Joi, his holographic girlfriend, a present. She is the only person of significance in a totally solitary life. The Road

The Road (2017)

5 The father and son walk in a grey landscape with no animals, no living things and skeleton trees around them. 2 Answer the questions. 1 What dehumanising effects do all the films highlight in your opinion? 2 Which film shows the dangers of our present world best in your opinion? WRITE CREATIVE 3 Imagine that you are a journalist reporting from one of the imaginary worlds that the films depict. For you that world is real, but you can send a message to all the people of the past to warn them about the risks of living alienated lives, and even risking the destruction of their civilisation. Write your article in about 200 words; your purpose is to persuade them that they need to take a positive course of action now.

Ideas for your map: CRISIS/STERILITY

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Poetry in the Modern Age

LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Poetry in the Modern Age

In poetry, the break with tradition was sharper and deeper than ever before in English literature; similarly to what happened with prose, poetry went through a transition period until the 1920s.

Transitional poets Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues were one of the first signs of the end of the elegiac mode typical of Victorian poetry. Georgian poetry, instead, was a short-lived movement whose main work was a five-volume anthology, Georgian Poetry, 1911–12. It was written in smooth rhythms, mainly inspired by rural life and intentionally avoiding contemporary problems. Georgian poetry was branded as escapist and provincial, and lost its appeal at the outbreak of the First World War. The great enthusiasm that greeted the outbreak of the conflict was soon replaced by disillusionment and frustration. In England, the War poets ( p. 388), John McCrae, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Siegfried Sassoon, were personally involved in the conflict. They wrote lyrical, tragic and sometimes even ironic poems, testifying to the horrors of trench life and the uselessness of war. William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), the main representative of the Celtic revival, a movement for the rediscovery of Irish folklore and traditions, turned away from the canons of Victorian poetry. In his last phase, influenced by French Symbolism and Ezra Pound’s poetry, he turned to personal themes, inspired by mystical theories and nationalistic ideas such as the protest over the massacre in Ireland depicted in Easter 1916.

Modernist poets The innovations of Modernist poetry were the result of the combination of many factors: French Symbolism, Imagism and Vorticism, and in the case of T.S. Eliot, also the anthropological works of James Frazer and Jessie Weston.

▶ Paul Nash, We Are Making a New World (1918)

348

The Modern Age – Poetry in the Modern Age

Major influences • French Symbolism had its beginnings in French literature with the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), which focuses on a clear opposition between ‘spleen’ (death, despair, solitude, murder and disease) and the ‘ideal’ (perfect love and an escape from reality through wine, opium and travel). Baudelaire considered the modern city the essence of ‘modernity’. Symbolist poets, such as Baudelaire himself, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner and gave particular images or objects a symbolic meaning. They also experimented with verse forms, most of the time opting for free verse. • Imagism was an anti-Romantic Anglo-American literary movement. The term ‘Imagists’ was coined by the American Ezra Pound (1885–1972), one of the leading exponents of the movement, who in 1914 coedited an anthology entitled Des Imagistes. The movement was a reaction against the Georgians and Romanticism. It aimed at a truthful and concrete presentation of the world perceived by the senses through hard dry images and using free verse. It was inspired by French Symbolism, Chinese poetry and the Japanese haiku. • Vorticism was a literary and artistic movement that developed as an offshoot of Cubism, and more particularly of Italian Futurism. It was launched in 1912 by American writer Wyndham Lewis (1884–1957). Together with Ezra Pound he edited ‘Blast, The Review of the Great English Vortex‘ (1914–15). The movement praised the beauty of the machine.

The first and second phase of Modernist poetry • The first phase of Modernist poetry went from 1910 to 1930. It was very innovative and experimental. Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound mirrored the spiritual crisis of the century in their works in impersonal forms. Ezra Pound left America for Europe at the age of 18 to find success. He became an influential poet and critic, and also a mentor of poets such as Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965 p. 394). Eliot was the most important Modernist poet, and many influences – Symbolism, Imagism, Metaphysical poetry, the Italian medieval author Dante, works from the Oriental tradition and the new reflections of anthropology – came together IN ACTION Look and think

Haiku and nature During the 17th century, Japanese poets developed the haiku, poems that invoke an image and recreate moments of connection to nature. In Japanese, haiku traditionally have seventeen syllables divided into three lines of a fixed five-seven-five pattern. Today, haiku is written in many languages and the syllable patterns adapt to the various languages.

▶ Three haiku poems on a stylised background of three rocks in a Zen garden, a miniature stylised landscape of carefully arranged rocks, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and sand, and which uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water. (Anonymous, Kyoto, 1850–60)

1 Answer the questions. 1 Are the haiku mostly vertical or horizontal in the drawing? 2 What natural element could the haiku represent? 3 Do you think that haiku express serenity and peace in nature, or horror and fear? Try writing one haiku thinking of one place in nature that you love. 349

in his poem The Waste Land (1922). He showed the sterility of the modern world, characterised by apathy, impotence, and the inability to renew itself. He combined references, quotes, allusions as objective correlatives for feelings and sensations. In Four Quartets (1943) they became more personal and moving as he expressed the phases of his life through places to explore. A literary critic and playwright, Eliot exercised his direct and indirect influence on all of 20th-century literature.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

• The second phase came after the 1930s with the Oxford Group, a group of poets, all students from Oxford, and their renewed interest in political and social matters. Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–73 p. 404), their main representative, showed his socialist sympathies and interest in political matters, even the most crucial of his time, for example, the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and their loss of citizenship and all human and political rights in Refugee Blues (1939).

Post-Modernist poets The 1930s were a period of crisis caused by the 1929 Wall Street Crash in America and marked by political divisions which culminated in the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Poets responded to one more crisis in their world by taking a step forward in experimentation and rediscovering contemporary life, also in its socio-political dimensions, or by rediscovering Romanticism although in a totally renewed form, influenced by the new avant-garde movements in the arts. The Oxford Group, which included Wystan Hugh Auden ( p. 404), Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice, were much more politically committed than the Modernists. Although applying the symbolist technique that they had learnt from Eliot and Yeats, they also used jazz rhythms, slang and imagery often derived from the world of machines. New Romanticism flourished in the late Thirties and early Forties. Reacting against the Oxford poets, it was above all influenced by Surrealism and its anti-rational theories. Among the so-called ‘New Romantics’, Dylan Thomas (1914–53) wrote a subjective and private sort of poetry. He introduced new imagery and new forms, partly due to his Welsh background.

MIND MAP

Transition poets

dramatic monologue – R. Browning, A. Tennyson

Modernist poets

French Symbolism – Charles Baudelaire

Georgian poetry War poets (WW I)

Poetry in the Modern Age

metaphorical suggestive poetry

Imagism – Ezra Pound

images – free verse – haiku

Celtic revival – W.B. Yeats

350

The Modern Age – Poetry in the Modern Age

first and second phase of Modernist poetry

Vorticism – W. Lewis

first phase

spiritual crisis Ezra Pound – poet and mentor T.S. Eliot – objective correlative

second phase

Oxford Group (W.H. Auden) – post-Modernists interest in social-political matters

New Romanticism

post-Modernist poets (Dylan Thomas)

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–5) to its other half (a–e) to build a summary of Transitional poetry. 1

Until the 1920s, poetry went through a transition period

Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues were

illiam Butler Yeats was the main representative of the Celtic W revival,

b a sign of the end of the elegiac mode typical of Victorian poetry.

eorgian poetry was written in smooth rhythms, mainly G inspired by rural life

d a movement for the rediscovery of Irish folklore and traditions.

War poets were all personally involved in World War I and

a wrote lyrical, tragic poems about the horrors of trench life and the uselessness of war. c and intentionally avoided contemporary problems. e which was followed by a break with tradition.

2 Complete the summary of Modernist poetry with the given words. Imagism • Symbolism • political • spiritual crisis • impersonal • real-ideal • sentimentalism • critical • short • free verse

Modernist poetry The three main influences on Modernism were French (1) (3)

, (2)

and Vorticism. The opposing elements of

is central to French Symbolism, which tried to escape from the real into the ideal through wine, opium and travel, while in

Imagism poets tried to avoid all (4) for (6)

and chose to focus on precise images in (5)

poems. Both movements opted

. Vorticism, which came after Cubism and Italian Futurism and praised the beauty of the machine.

Modernist poets are usually grouped into two main phases: the first includes Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound, who mirrored the (7)

of the century in their works, but indirectly, in (8)

forms. Eliot was the most influential

representative of Modernist poetry with his poems The Waste Land and Four Quartets and also his intense theatrical and (9) activity. During the second phase, a group of poets, the Oxford Group, showed renewed interest in (10)

and social matters.

Wystan Hugh Auden was the main representative of the movement.

3 Answer the questions about post-Modernist poetry. 1 Why did the Oxford Group renew their interest in political and social matters? 2 What was Auden’s main interest? 3 How did New Romanticism relate to the Oxford Group?

▶ René Magritte, Transfer

Ideas for your map: EXPERIMENTATION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Transitional novelists LEARNING DIGITAL J oseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness PDF

• No more the Dark Continent • Heart of Darkness: full plot

PDF

From Heart of Darkness DT46 Mistah Kurtz – he dead

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Profile During his 20 years at sea, Conrad sought new experiences and adventure, which provided him with material for his writing. His interest was the study of the moral nature of man when extreme circumstances oblige people to admit that they are not emotionally different from those that they despise. This is the situation that Conrad presents in his novels about the ‘encounter’ with different civilisations. Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Conrad was an experimentalist, willing to break the rules and conventions that had dominated novel writing for almost two centuries. He looked up to Flaubert’s psychological realism in Madame Bovary (1856) much more than to the tradition of English realism. He shared with Symbolism the view that a work of art does not have one exclusive meaning and one definite conclusion, and in his works, symbolism replaces linear development and joins up events which are separate in time. Impressionism, which favoured ‘impressions’, partial glimpses of the world filtered through the artist’s consciousness, was influential in developing his narrative techniques. Delayed decoding, an oblique narrative style, symbolism, subjectivism in perceptions, a non-linear narrative with flashbacks and an unreliable narrator are the main innovations of his works, written in English because of his fascination with the immense vocabulary of his ‘second language’.

Heart of Darkness (1902) The title of the novel evokes not only the heart of Africa, the ‘Dark Continent’ in Conrad’s times, but also the heart of man and evil. This symbolism opened up the way to the modern novel of the first half of the 20th century, which focuses on the psychological dimension and treats narrative time in non-linear ways.

THE PLOT IN ACTION English in action 1 Find the words that mean the same. 1 admired:

2 quick looks:

3 postponing:

An unnamed narrator recounts what he was told by Marlow, an introspective sailor, while talking on a boat on the Thames waiting to depart. Marlow narrates his journey up the Congo River to find Kurtz, a company agent and an ivory trader who has disappeared in the African jungle. On his journey, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the company’s stations. He finally arrives at Kurtz’s inner station, where he is informed that Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal attacks in the surrounding territory in search of ivory. Kurtz is carried aboard the boat, as he is seriously ill. On the way back the boat breaks down, and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, saying his last words: ‘The horror! The horror!‘ Back in Europe, Marlow meets Kurtz’ fiancée, and tells her that Kurtz died with her name on his lips.

4 opinion:

5 hidden places:

6 hidden in darkness:

352

Themes and interpretations The novel superficially presents the traits of a Bildungsroman, as it is the story of the initiation into life of a young man (Marlow) and of a much more mysterious character (Mistah Kurtz). However, no definite path can be detected and the novel can be interpreted in many ways: the narrative of an adventurous voyage into the Dark Continent, a political statement about colonialism and imperialism, an account of the injustices and horrors perpetrated in Africa by trading companies, a journey to the centre of the self, or even a parable of the fall of man.

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1857 Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Polish Ukraine. After his parents’ death he lived in Kiev, Kracow, but mostly in France, where he learnt the language.

1874 He went to Marseilles and sailed in a French ship to South America.

1878 He joined the English Merchant Navy, where he started to learn English.

1886 He became a British subject.

1890 KEY FACT He sailed up the Congo River.

1894 KEY FACT He left the merchant navy and devoted himself to writing.

1900

1904

1902

1907

Lord Jim

1897

The Nigger of the Narcissus

WORKS

Youth Heart of Darkness p. 352

Nostromo The Secret Agent

1911

Under Western Eyes

1912

1916

The Shadow Line

Chance

IN ACTION Look and think

Catching ‘impressions’ ▶ Claude Monet, Water Lilies 34 (1919). Monet produced about 250 versions of water lilies, all about his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and over a period of thirty years. No painting is like any other.

2 Answer the questions. 1 What is floating on the water? Give details. 2 Are the shapes of the water lilies clear or vague? 3 Do you know of any other writer who does something similar? Read, watch and think

• Colonialism and new imperialism

Apocalypse now

The novel is a criticism of all imperialist European countries, especially Britain. The British pretend to bring the light of civilisation to ‘degenerate African brutes’, but Kurtz is not an explorer devoted to the civilisation of the African natives. He is a cruel tyrant. He has killed natives, chosen a native woman as his lover, and considers himself a demigod. His colonial activity is nothing but torture, cruelty and near slavery, and he is conscious that what is called ‘trade’ really means taking precious ivory by force and violence. Conrad portrays British imperialism also in the naïve main character, Marlow. He is fascinated by the unexplored areas around the world and believes that salvation, religion, culture and commerce are really being brought to Africa. This illusory lie is destroyed when Marlow meets Kurtz, and realises that, far from conquering Africa by imposing European civilisation on its inhabitants, Kurtz himself has been conquered by darkness: Kurtz is sick, dying and corrupt. His body and his moral nature have collapsed under the pressure of the extreme circumstances of the ‘Dark Continent’. Marlow sees the evil Kurtz has done, but does not judge him. This has led to a debate as regards Conrad’s critique of colonialism, although Marlow’s non-judgemental stance is part of Conrad’s ‘oblique’ style.

▲ Marlon Brando as Kurtz in Apocalypse

Now (1979), a film adaptation of Heart of Darkness by Francis Ford Coppola. The setting is moved from colonial Congo to the Vietnam War (1955–75). The film is a journey towards Willard’s (Marlow’s) understanding of how Kurtz, one of the US Army’s best soldiers, was brought to madness and desperation by the war. Kurtz repeats to himself the words of T.S. Eliot’s despairing The Hollow Men, a poem about the vacuity of life and men’s souls. Its epitaph is ‘Mistah Kurtz-he dead/A penny for the Old Guy’.

3 Answer the questions. 1 Brando made an iconic appearance in the film. What strikes you about his expression in the photo? 2 Search for the clip in which Brando delivers the first lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem, or when he delivers his monologue about the cruelty of men and the request of being nonjudgemental about his own crimes. Do you think that his words have caught the real spirit of Heart of Darkness?

• The dark self Marlow’s journey up the Congo River into the dark recesses of the African jungle is also a journey into the inner self and into the ‘heart of darkness’ it hides. The jungle is a metaphor for reality, and for the dark truth hidden in the soul of man. Its darkness represents doubt and uncertainty, the ‘mystery of the self’ to be explored and discovered.

Language and style Although Conrad was not a Modernist, Heart of Darkness can be seen as the anticipation of the Modernist novel because of its multiple interpretations, its unreliable narrator, its presentation of experience as subjective, its symbolism and oblique narrative style. An unnamed narrator relates the narrative as Marlow tells it to him. Marlow is an unreliable narrator, on several occasions providing the reader with information which is later shown to be false, and he has difficulty in expressing his perceptions accurately and making fair judgements.

Ideas for your map: EVIL

p. 437

353

AUTHORS AND WORKS Transitional novelists

This has been identified as ‘delayed decoding’: Conrad records first the impressions that an event makes on Marlow and only later Marlow’s explanation of the event. The reader realises only gradually what is really happening and thus shares in the experience of Marlow’s perplexity. As for Kurtz, he is continuously commented upon, but he appears only briefly at the end of the novel. His figure shrouded in mystery is the most important example of delayed decoding. Marlow’s narrative continually moves back and forth in time, accumulating impressions from various times in his attempt to make sense of his experience. His method breaks up the temporal continuity associated with the 19th-century novel.

Symbolism The river, the boat and the jungle, all natural elements, are real and create the ideal conditions of isolation. At the same time, they are symbols of the thoughts and emotions of man which may best reveal man’s essence. The language used by Conrad combines realism and symbolism in the constant contrast between black and white, light and darkness. MIND MAP

moral nature of man

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness

heart of man – evil

anticipation of Modernists

colonialism – new imperialism

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

multiple interpretations

Kurtz – cruel tyrant

unreliable narrator

Marlow – naïve – non judgmental

subjective experience

1 What was Conrad most interested in?

symbolism

2 Who/What influenced him in developing his style? 3 How innovative was his style, and why?

oblique narrative style

4 Which are the two main themes of Heart of Darkness? delayed decoding

5 Why is Heart of Darkness a Modernist novel?

LEARNING DIGITAL

T54 The journey upwards

Heart of Darkness

Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Marlow is sailing up the Congo River to reach Mistah Kurtz’s station. He describes to the reader his perception of the river itself.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. shines • captain • darkness • banks • past • fulfills • lost

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The narrator describes what he sees on his voyage; the river with its (1) vegetation and animals, immersed in (2) in the sky. He feels (4)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

354

The Modern Age – Authors and works

and silence, although the sun (3)

, alienated from both present and (5)

an eye on the river as he sails on and (6)

and islands,

his duties as a steamboat (7)

. He keeps .

Joseph Conrad UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 Does Marlow find any evidence of human life?

2 Is the jungle peaceful?

3 What does Marlow have to do as a steamboat captain?

4 How does he see his duties?

“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted1 on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish2. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches3 of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom4 of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned 5 themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob5 of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted6 all day long against shoals7, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched8 and cut off for ever from everything you had known once — somewhere — far away — in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when 10 you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful9 and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming10 realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness11 of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over12 an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful13 aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any 15 more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing14 at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks15; I watched for sunken stones […]. I had to keep a look-out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day’s steaming16. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality — the reality, I tell you — fades17. The inner truth is hidden — luckily, luckily. But 20 I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks18. (From Chapter 2)

1 rioted: lussureggiava 2 sluggish: indolente 3 stretches: distese 4 gloom: oscurità

5 flowed through a mob: scorrevano attraverso una moltitudine 6 butted: si andava a sbattere 7 shoals: secche 8 bewitched: incantato 9 unrestful: agitato 10 overwhelming: opprimente 11 stillness: immobilità 12 brooding over: che rimuginava 13 vengeful: vendicativo 14 keep guessing: tener d’occhio 15 hidden banks: banchi nascosti

(il fiume è insidioso e Marlow deve prestare la massima attenzione mentre naviga) 16 next day’s steaming: il vapore del giorno dopo (la barca usa il legno come carburante e Marlow lo raccoglie giorno per giorno) 17 fades: svanisce 18 monkey tricks: trucchi da scimmia (con questa espressione il narratore riassume tutte le sue cautele mentre naviga sul fiume)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What are all the natural elements of the landscape? 2 How does Marlow perceive the reality of the river? 3 How does he remember his past? 4 How does Marlow feel? Choose all the correct options. angry

alienated

puzzled

oppressed

alone

lucky

observed

joyful

WEB QUEST ▲ Another scene from the 1979 film version of the novel depicting Marlow in the mud of the river.

4 For Marlow, Africa is the ‘Dark Continent’. Search the web to check if this expression is still in use, and how. PDF

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Transitional novelists LEARNING DIGITAL E dward Morgan Forster and A Passage to India PDF

Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970)

Howards End DT47 Beethoven and the goblins

Profile Forster’s novels offer an insight into the changing reality of the social classes in the British world, both at home and in the interaction with the cultures and traditions of peoples of different countries. In A Room with a View, this is represented by the Italian and English lifestyles, the former much freer than the latter. Lucy Honeychurch, a young, upper-class woman travelling to Italy, realises that the classes and conventions she has always accepted are arbitrary. She decides to marry a young Englishman that she had met in Florence, George Emerson, opposing her family over her choice. Back in Florence the couple rent a room with a view over the Arno, the one Lucy had not received on her first stay and which only came from her accepting the Emersons’ offer to swap rooms; the room symbolises a freer vision of life. In Howards End, three classes are shown in their difficult interactions through love affairs and friendship: the Schlegel family, from the upper class, who represent artistic and intellectual interests, the Wilcox family, pragmatic and money-minded, who represent conventional work ethic and morality, and the Bast family, from the lower class. Leonard Bast represents the frustrated desire for self-improvement and social mobility through reading and self-education. At the end of the novel, Mrs Wilcox’s estate, Howards End, on the outskirts of London, hosts many of the characters. Their presence there symbolically represents the mingling of classes that Britain is experiencing, and also the Wilcoxes’ realisation that they have been blind to the poverty of the lower classes and need to take a more responsible line of action. Still, their view that money is not everything in life depends on the fact that they have money, and this shows the ambiguous nature of Forster’s reflections in the novel. The same issues of class, culture and societal values are presented in A Passage to India. The setting in India during the British Raj enables Forster to talk about the vain search for mutual comprehension and solidarity among peoples. The sad conclusion is that conciliation between deeply different worlds is impossible. Maurice, published posthumously but actually written in 1914 on Forster’s return from India, first openly revealed his attempt to come to terms with his sense of shame over his homosexuality.

Style Forster followed the rules and techniques of the Victorian novelists. The narrator is omniscient and it is only his personal opinion that is expressed through the characters’ words. His novels contain delicate psychological analysis, as well as episodes of dramatic violence, and employ narrative elements in symbolical terms.

IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to swap something with somebody = to return / exchange something to / with somebody 2 social mobility = change in a person’s socio-economic / political situation 3 money minded = caring too much about / being indifferent to wealth 4 pragmatic = based on theoretical / practical considerations 5 the British Raj = the British Crown rule / administration of the Indian subcontinent from 1858–1947 356

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1879 Edward Morgan Forster was born in London and lost his father before he was one. He was educated at Eastbourne and Tonbridge schools, where he suffered deeply from the strict discipline.

1897 KEY FACT He entered King’s College, Cambridge, where he later became a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

WORKS

1901–02 KEY FACT He visited Italy and India three times. On his return he became a lecturer at Cambridge and wrote biographies and critical works. 1908

A Room with a View

1910

Howards End

1924

A Passage to India p. 357

1927

Aspects of the Novel

1971 (posthumous) Maurice

A Passage to India (1924) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

A Passage to India is a picture of India under the British Raj after the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, when British troops shot the crowd, and in the context of the independence movements. It is a strong attack on the injustices of British imperialism as well as an exposure of the difficulties connected with living in a multicultural environment.

THE PLOT Mrs Moore, a widow, and Adela Quested, a young woman, arrive in Chandrapore, where Ronnie Heaslop, Adela’s fiancé and Mrs Moore’s son, is the Chief Magistrate. Mrs Moore visits a mosque as she is deeply interested in Indian culture. She meets Dr Aziz, a young Muslim Indian doctor, who invites Mrs Moore and Miss Quested to visit a sacred Indian place, the Marabar Caves, near Chandrapore, the fictional city where the novel is set. In the caves, Mrs Moore becomes very upset and Miss Quested becomes disoriented and hallucinates, accusing Dr Aziz of having tried to rape her. Aziz is imprisoned and

put on trial. Aziz’s trial exacerbates tensions between the British and the Indians, especially when Fielding, Aziz’s British friend, sides with the Indians in Aziz’s defence. In the witness box Adela withdraws her accusation; Mr Heaslop and the English community are deeply humiliated. Aziz is set free and he turns furiously away from all the British. Heaslop ends his engagement to Adela and she returns home. Aziz and Fielding meet again a few years later in Mau, an independent Hindu region, but they mutually recognise the impossibility of continuing their friendship.

Themes • Cultural misunderstanding and culture clash A major theme is cultural misunderstanding between three groups: the English, the Muslim Indians, and the Hindu Indians. The deep divisions between the Muslims and the Hindus are revealed in the tense relationship between the two groups of characters in the novel, while the culture clash between the East and West is reflected in the conflict between Dr Aziz, the protagonist, and the friends he has in both the Indian and British communities. Miss Adela’s desire to see the ‘real’ India and Mrs Moore’s accidental meeting with Dr Aziz in the mosque initiate a series of encounters between the British and the Indians on a number of social occasions, but integration between the three groups seems impossible. Conflict and culture clash come to their climax with the excursion to the Marabar Caves. The episode is central to both conflict and meaning, for the symbolic significance of the caves themselves, which in Hindu mythology represent ‘the womb of the universe’, and for the complications that the episode creates in the local communities. Only when the British accept the end of their Empire in India, will the English and the Indians be able to meet as beings with equal dignity.

• India for the British

▲ The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, with the Maharajah of Gwalior during his Indian tour (1921)

Fielding, Forster’s mouthpiece in the novel, believes that India is a ‘muddle’, both in its environment and its population, with its makeup of different religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups. Mrs Moore sees India as a ‘mystery’, a mystical, orderly reality guided by a spiritual force that is greater than man. Other characters, such as Miss Adela, the woman who accuses Aziz of rape at the Marabar Caves, are confused by the muddle of India. Hinduism plays a large role in the novel with its ideal of all living things, from the lowliest to the highest, united in love as one. At first, Mrs Moore is open to this aspect of Hinduism but the lack of distinctions inherent in this mystical union then appears to her as a horror. 357

MIND MAP

Edward Morgan Forster mingling of social classes in British world

injustice of British imperialism

multicultural environment

psychological analysis

British Raj

cultural misunderstanding – culture clash

India as a mystery

A Passage to India

Hinduism – love and unity of all things

the English – the Muslim Indians – the Hindu Indians – no integration CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

2 Write detailed information about:

1 What aspects of British life did Forster explore in A Room with a View?

• Context

2 What mentalities confront one another in Howards End through the main social groups?

• Main purpose

3 What was Forster’s contribution to the development of the novel of the 20th century?

• India for the British

• Cultural misunderstanding/clash

T55 Can different cultures meet?

A Passage to India

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

At the entrance of the mosque Aziz meets Mrs Moore, an elderly English lady who has just come to India. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

faith • moved • permission • Muslims • apologises • taken off • holy • respectful • offended • shocked Aziz is still deeply (1)

by the atmosphere of the mosque and his memories when he

suddenly realises there is a British woman in the mosque and is (2)

by her presence

her shoes. He (4)

because he thinks that she hasn’t (3)

when the

woman says she has removed them because she knows the mosque is a (5) (6)

and asks (7)

had imagined and is (8) on her (9)

place to

to stay. Aziz realises she is not the young woman he but also relieved. He asks the woman her name and comments

attitude to him and his (10)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Aziz see and smell as he sits in the mosque?

2 What does he focus on?

1 bounded: circondava 2 Hindus: maggiore gruppo religioso in India 3 were drumming: stavano

358

His seat was the low wall that bounded1 the courtyard on the left. The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds. On the right, over in the club, the English community contributed an amateur orchestra. Elsewhere some Hindus2 were drumming3 – he knew they were Hindus, because the rhythm was uncongenial to him, – and others were bewailing a corpse4 – he knew 5 whose, having certified it in the afternoon. There were owls, the Punjab mail5, and flowers smelt deliciously in the station-master’s garden. But the mosque – that alone signified6, and he returned to it from the complex appeal of the night, and decked7 it with meanings the builder had never intended. […] He had seen the quatrain on the tomb of a Deccan8 king, and regarded it as profound 10 suonando i tamburi 4 bewailing a corpse: officiando un servizio funebre con canti 5 Il Punjab mail è il treno più antico

The Modern Age – Authors and works

dell’India, risalente al1912. 6 signified: importava 7 decked: adornò 8 Aziz sta pensando ad alcuni versi

toccanti che ha letto durante la sua visita a Deccan, un altopiano che occupa la maggior parte dell’India del sud.

Ideas for your map: MULTICULTURALISM

p. 437

Edward Morgan Forster

3 Is the misunderstanding between Aziz and the woman solved?

9 with… eyes: il pathos dei versi e la sacralità della moschea fanno piangere Aziz; egli è profondamente commosso 10 pillars: pilastri 11 quiver: tremolare 12 swayed: oscillava (il movimento dei pilastri, solo apparente perché dovuto alle lacrime che annebbiano la vista di Aziz, sembra aumentare) 13 in the gloom: nell’oscurità 14 gasped: trattenne il respiro 15 Moslems: una variazione nello spelling per Muslims 16 startled: sorpresa ed allarmata 17 Advancing… pieces: Aziz aveva pensato dalla voce che la donna fosse giovane, ora capisce che la donna è molto anziana 18 Hamidullah Begum è uno zio anziano di Aziz. 19 had deceived him: l’aveva ingannato (Aziz ha creduto per un attimo che la donna fosse giovane.) 20 you address me: Lei si rivolge a me (Aziz deduce che Mrs Moore è appena arrivata in

philosophy – he always held pathos to be profound. The secret understanding of the heart! He repeated the phrase with tears in his eyes9 and as he did so one of the pillars10 of the mosque seemed to quiver11. It swayed12 in the gloom13 and detached itself. Belief in ghosts ran in his blood, but he sat firm. Another pillar moved, a third, and then an Englishwoman 15 stepped out into the moonlight. Suddenly he was furiously angry and shouted: “Madam! Madam! Madam!” “Oh! Oh!” the woman gasped14. “Madam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; you should have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems15.” 20 “I have taken them off.” “You have?” “I left them at the entrance.” “Then I ask your pardon.” Still startled16, the woman moved out, keeping the ablution-tank between them. He called 25 after her, “I am truly sorry for speaking.” “Yes, I was right, was I not? If I remove my shoes, I am allowed?” “Of course, but so few ladies take the trouble, especially if thinking no one is there to see.” “That makes no difference. God is here.” “Madam!” 30 “Please let me go.” “Oh, can I do you some service now or at any time?” “No, thank you, really none – good night.” “May I know your name?” She was now in the shadow of the gateway, so that he could not see her face, but she saw 35 his, and she said with a change of voice, “Mrs Moore.” “Mrs ~” Advancing, he found that she was old. A fabric bigger than the mosque fell to pieces17, and he did not know whether he was glad or sorry. She was older than Hamidullah Begum18, with a red face and white hair. Her voice had deceived him19. “Mrs Moore, I am afraid I startled you. I shall tell our community – my friends – about you. 40 That God is here – very good, very fine indeed. I think you are newly arrived in India.” “Yes – how do you know?” “By the way you address me”20. (Abridged from Chapter 2) India dal comportamento rispettoso della donna e dal fatto che gli rivolge la parola.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Identify the three cultures/religions (Christian/ Hindu/ Muslim) that are present in the extract. Which matters most to Dr Aziz? 2 What evidence is there of the separation of the cultures in Aziz’s behaviour? 3 Is Mrs Moore a typical prejudiced British person looking down on the Indian world? 4 What kind of narrator is present in the passage (external/internal, omniscient/non omniscient)?

Aziz è convinto che gli Inglesi, liberali in patria ed inizialmente disponibili a mischiarsi con i

nativi non appena arrivati in India, inevitabilmente mutano il loro atteggiamento e si isolano)

SURVEY MAKING c Prejudices are inevitable and there is no way to overcome them.

4 Are we really unprejudiced? Identify a group of respondents and ask each to choose one only of the options below, and in secret. Check which option has won most votes, and discuss the results with your classmates.

d Prejudices are inevitable and cannot be overcome. Different cultures should live separately. e Prejudices are inevitable and can be overcome by human sympathy and a real acceptance of each other’s cultural identity.

a Prejudices are inevitable but they can be overcome by human sympathy. b Prejudices are inevitable but human sympathy is not enough; people need to give up their identity and traditions to accept the other. PDF

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James Joyce

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(1882–1941)

The stream-ofconsciousness novel

LEARNING DIGITAL J ames Joyce and Ulysses James Joyce

PPT

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Most of Joyce’s adult life was spent in self-exile in total rejection of both Irish nationalism and localism. The choice of exile and the search for an artistically stimulating environment was introduced in Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, an unconventional Bildungsroman about Stephen Dedalus, an artist who rebels against conventions and the Catholic faith. For Joyce, the Catholic Church was one of the most ferocious sources of the oppression and spiritual paralysis of his country. The protagonist follows the dysfunctional path of Balzac’s and Flaubert’s characters in his rejection of legitimate authority. Joyce avoids simple realism and follows the wanderings of Stephen’s mind through the use of free indirect thought. Dedalus’ choice to leave Ireland mirrors Joyce’s decision to leave his home country – he never returned to it after 1912 – and to live in cities such as Trieste and Paris. At the beginning of the 20th century, both were cosmopolitan centres with their many literary cafés frequented by artists, with Trieste being the cultural and literary centre of the ‘Austrian Riviera’, and Paris the centre of Modernism between the two World Wars. However, all of Joyce’s works, and not just A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, are local and only talk about Dublin and the Irish world. The characters and events are modelled on real people and on Joyce’s life, but deliberately depersonalised so as to reach a universal dimension. A Modernist writer, Joyce radically transformed the modern novel with his experimentation. He combined Realism and Symbolism in Dubliners, a collection of short stories that collectively build up Joyce’s interpretation of the Bildungsroman, applied not to one individual but to many from boyhood to old age. With Ulysses, Joyce defined the mythical method, developing the 1,000-page novel about one single day in Dublin as a parallelism between Leopold Bloom’s ‘wanderings’ and those of Odysseus, the clever hero in Homer’s Odyssey.

1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to its definition (a–d). 1

localism

Austrian Riviera

free association

impersonality

a a deliberate lack of involvement on the narrator’s part b seaside resorts on the Adriatic coast of the Austrian crown lands of Gorizia and Istria c excessive interest in and devotion to one’s local culture d when something suggests something else without any logical connection

Style In Joyce’s works, time is ‘duration’ and subjective and the new dominant narrative technique is the interior monologue. He rejected conventional syntax and common rules of punctuation in a flow that can be either totally uninterrupted and only focused on the characters’ thoughts and feelings, or mixed with their sensations in connection with the external world presented by the narrator. The characters’ thoughts and impressions are presented as raw and quickly mix into one another, following the principles of free association. The narrator does not comment because the intimate relationship between the author and his public, typical of the Victorian realistic novel, is abandoned in favour of impersonality. Multiple focalisation is used, which sees the events with the eyes of different characters at different times. MIND MAP

James Joyce rejection of Irish nationalism and localism

Trieste and Paris 360

Dublin and the Irish world – universal dimension

The Modern Age – Authors and works

realism – symbolism mythical method

subjective time – duration

interior monologue

free association

impersonality

LIFE 1882 KEY FACT James Joyce was born in Dublin. His Catholic family was not rich, but he received a very good education at Jesuit schools and then at University College Dublin. His Bachelor of Arts focused on modern languages.

1902 KEY FACT He found Ireland impossibly oppressive and left.

1903 His mother’s illness brought him back temporarily. During his stay he met Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid, and established a life-long relationship with her.

1904 KEY FACT Joyce and Nora permanently emigrated to continental Europe. After a short stay in Paris, they moved to Trieste. He taught English and learned Italian.

WORKS

1907 He befriended one of his students in Trieste, the Italian writer Italo Svevo, and started having problems with his eyesight.

1915 Joyce and Nora moved to Zurich because many of his students had gone to fight in the Great War, and his position was difficult as a British subject in Austrian territory.

1914

Dubliners p. 361

1920 KEY FACT He met Ezra Pound, who invited him to Paris, where he met Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate and editor.

1916

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

1931 Joyce and Nora married in London.

1922

1940 They went to southern France and then to Zurich to escape the Nazis.

1939

Ulysses

Finnegans Wake

2 Why is Joyce a cosmopolitan writer?

CHECK OUT

3 What role did Trieste and Paris play in the early 20th century?

1 Answer the questions. 1 What innovations did A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man introduce?

4 What innovations did Joyce introduce in his works? 5 What are the main features of the interior monologue?

IN ACTION Look and think 1 Answer the questions. 1 What does the figure of the lone girl at the window represent in art? 2 Is the girl looking outside to the outside world? 3 How similar is the colour of her dress to the world outside and the window? 4 Does she look strong and determined? 5 Joyce’s story opens with Eveline at the window. How do you imagine her, sitting or standing, looking out or rather passive?

◀ Edward Munch, The Girl by the Window (1893)

The lone figure of a girl at an open window is a popular subject in art as it represents the relationship/contrast interior/external world, with the window being the opening, the ‘crack’ through which the world comes in, or through which the subject looks out.

Dubliners (1914) Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories arranged in four groups, from childhood to adulthood, plus one final conclusive story, The Dead. The increasing ages of the multiple characters ideally show the growth of the country from childhood to adult life though in a condition of increasing paralysis. • Childhood (The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby) • Adolescence (After the Race, The Boarding House, Eveline, Two Gallants) • Maturity (A Little Cloud, Clay, Counterparts, A Painful Case) • Public Life (Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace) • The Dead

Ideas for your map: STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS

p. 437

361

AUTHORS AND WORKS The stream-ofconsciousness novel

Themes • Epiphany and paralysis The stories, all set in Dublin, show the ‘epiphany’, a moment of self-awareness which leads the character to a sudden revelation about himself/herself. Joyce defined epiphany as ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation‘, usually caused by an external gesture, object or situation. Each story contains one or more epiphanies concerning the main character, and the content of the epiphany is the characters’ ‘emotional paralysis’, always presented through a precise physical connotation. Joyce saw paralysis as the result of the oppressive Irish mentality, shaped by both politics and religion. His characters are unable to change the present course of their lives and fall back on what they know, with a higher degree of consciousness due to the epiphany. The paralysis is both real and symbolic. In Eveline (Adolescence), the protagonist sits at the window lost in deep thought and her immobility represents her final incapability to choose a new way of life. The last story, The Dead, is the climax of the whole collection, with the final epiphany of the main character Gabriel Conroy. After a New Year’s Eve party at his aging aunts’ house, Gabriel’s wife remembers the tragic death of a young lover, and is deeply moved, while Gabriel himself sees his own alienation next to his sleeping wife and has his epiphany. He feels empty and disillusioned, and his moment of self-awareness, in the middle of snow falling and covering the whole country, stands for the paralysis and ‘death’ of Ireland itself.

Language and style The stories are both realistic and symbolic in style. The focalisation is mostly through the protagonists, so the narrative varies considerably as the characters have different ages, sexes, social and psychological backgrounds.

MIND MAP

Dubliners CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

epiphany – spiritual manifestation/self-awareness

paralysis – real and symbolic

realist – symbolic

character focalisation

oppressive Irish mentality / politics and religion

1 What gives unity to Dubliners? 2 What are epiphany and paralysis for Joyce? 3 What causes the paralysis?

Eveline LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

DT48 Eveline (the complete short story)

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In the fourth story of the collection, from the Adolescence group, Eveline Hill is a 19-year-old girl who has always lived in Dublin. She is engaged to a young Irishman, Frank, who has been to Argentina and has found a new life there. Eveline and Frank are leaving for Argentina, where they will get married. The narrator presents her sitting at the window as she evaluates the pros and cons of her decision to leave. She thinks about her past and her future life until the memory of her dead mother comes back to her. The fear of losing her sanity, as her mother did, prompts her to stand up and realise that leaving Ireland is a means to save herself. Later she is at the harbour, about to board the ship to Argentina, but she freezes and is unable to speak, feeling that the waters will drown her. Frank boards the ship but she won’t move. In Ireland, Eveline lives a hard life; her mother and one of her brothers are dead, her father is an alcoholic and occasionally violent, she has to work in the Stores and also take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Her decision to leave Ireland is more the consequence of her fear of a life of hardship, violence and maybe insanity than the real desire of living a life with Frank. She likes being courted, but he just represents the opportunity to escape, and not love, for her.

The Modern Age – Authors and works

James Joyce

T56 Fear and paralysis

Dubliners – Eveline

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

In the final lines of the story Eveline and Frank are leaving for Argentina, where they will get married, because she can’t stand her life in Ireland any more. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

paralysed • recognise • answer • night • calls • prays • harbour That (1)

Eveline is at the (2)

with Frank, in the crowd of passengers

Ideas fordoesn’t your map: CONSCIOUSNESS . She silently p. XXX ready to board. He keeps speaking to her, but she (3) (4)

to God, and keeps wondering about her decision to go with Frank. When she has ; she can neither move nor speak. Frank (6)

to board the ship she is (5)

her as he boards the ship, but she seems not to (7)

him as she doesn’t even say

goodbye. She doesn’t move. Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is Eveline moving? 2 What can be seen of and heard from the boat?

3 What is Eveline’s only sound? 4 Does Frank force her to follow him?

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall1, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress2, she prayed 5 to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle3 into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer. 10 A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: “Come!” All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped4 with both hands at the iron railing. “Come!” No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched5 the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she 15 sent a cry of anguish! “Eveline! Evvy!” He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes 20 gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition. 1 quay wall: il muro della banchina 2 maze of distress: groviglio di angoscia

3 mournful whistle: fischio lamentoso 4 gripped: si tenne stretta

5 clutched: strinsero

ANALYSE 3 Eveline is pale and cold. What does she fear? Choose all the correct options.

4 Answer the questions.

the journey at sea

2 Why does the synecdoche of the hand that Frank holds represent Eveline’s fear of dying at sea?

meeting other migrants

3 What is Eveline’s epiphany as she clutches the iron railing?

being dragged onto the boat against her will

4 Is Eveline’s paralysis physical, psychological, or both?

dying at sea

facing what she does not know

5 The narrator uses free indirect thought, description and report. Are Eveline’s thoughts, feelings and actions and the setting fused, or separated? Why?

1 Is water presented only realistically or also symbolically?

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AUTHORS AND WORKS The stream-ofconsciousness novel

The Dead The Dead, the longest story in Dubliners, is the climax to the theme of decay and stagnation. The characters’ psychological analysis is more intimate and the symbolism of the end is more overt. The story can be divided into two parts; the first takes place at a dinner party shortly after Christmas, the second focuses more clearly on Gabriel Conroy, a schoolteacher and a critic, and his epiphany in a hotel room with his wife Gretta. The characters at the party are representative of contemporary Ireland including the different generations, religious denominations (Catholic and Protestant) and political sympathies. Gabriel Conroy dislikes Ireland, and there is a general agreement that Dublin is not a good place to live because it is spiritually apathetic. Only a few people intend to revive its past tradition and culture, for example Miss Ivors, a guest at the party. On the way to their hotel Gabriel becomes aware that he desires his wife Gretta, but she is sad and thinking of her lover from her youth, Michael Furey, who she remembered when she heard a song played at the party. Michael was sick but went to see Gretta under the rain before she left for Dublin. His death represents to Gretta a sort of martyrdom for love, but to Gabriel it is a terrifying reality because he cannot compete with him. Gretta falls asleep crying and Gabriel is left alone with his thoughts. He realises that he has never intensively loved Gretta. In the end he accepts the reality of death as universal and as being brought about by time passing and bringing old age and decay. The snow covering everything and everybody in Ireland represents the spiritual death that is becoming manifest in the country and that will soon be total. This is his and everybody’s epiphany: Ireland is paralysed in the sterile reminiscence of an oppressed culture, and is no longer vital.

▲ Scene from the 1987 film

adaptation of The Dead with Anjelica Houston as Gretta

T57 ‘I think he died for me‘

Dubliners – The Dead

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta are in their hotel room. She tells him about a boy, Michael Furey, who was sick and died shortly after visiting her one day in the cold weather, just before she left for Dublin. About to fall asleep, she cries thinking of how he died for her. 1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

uncertain • insignificant • snow • dead • emptiness • mourning • thoughts Gretta is sleeping and Gabriel is alone with his own (1)

. His role in his wife’s life appears

(2)

if compared with her dead lover’s. He imagines himself sitting in his aunt’s house,

(3)

her death, very soon, and the (4)

of his being without passion. This

about his identity in a grey reality. He hears the (6)

makes him feel (5)

falling against the windowpane, looks out and realises that the snow is falling all over Ireland, the living and the (7)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What does Gabriel realise?

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She was fast asleep. Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she 5 had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which 10 Michael Furey had braved death.

The Modern Age – Authors and works

James Joyce

2 What is he looking at?

3 How does his Aunt Julia seem to him?

4 Where is he now? 5 How solid does the world appear to him?

6 How does he feel now?

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good- 15 night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, 20 crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon. The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass 25 boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes 30 and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and 35 dwindling. A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the 40 treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent 45 of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Who is really alive in spirit, Furey or Conroy? Why? 2 Is the snow only a symbol, or also a physical reality? 3 Most of the extract consists of Gabriel’s’ interior monologue, with report by the narrator to describe what he is doing and seeing. What focalisation is present? INTERPRET 4 How different is Eveline’s final epiphany from Gabriel’s? Is the difference consistent with their ages? PDF

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365

AUTHORS AND WORKS The stream-ofconsciousness novel

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

LEARNING DIGITAL V irginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf

PPT

IN ACTION

Profile

English in action

As a girl living in the Victorian Age, Virginia was not expected to go to university as her brothers did. She had an immense library at home and this gave her access to a vast range of reading materials. She was an extremely sensitive woman, deeply aware of her own mental problems, whose recurrence greatly troubled her. She is believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder, with cycles of euphoria and depression. She was institutionalised and diagnosed with neurasthenia (nerve weakness), a Victorian euphemism for mental instability, but she was inadequately treated. As a Modernist writer, she established a new vision of art and played an outstanding role in the definition of Modernism and of the nature and purpose of the novel in letters, articles and critical essays. In Modern Fiction, included in The Common Reader, she claimed that traditional realism was unsatisfactory and that the new purpose of the novel was ‘to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit of man and the complexities of experience as a myriad of impressions— trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms‘. Given the vastness and complexities of experience, fiction must be flexible in order to catch all its shades. For her, ‘life exists more fully […] in what is commonly thought small‘. She called these experiences ‘moments of being’, moments of intense power and beauty, full of energy and awareness, which are not due to the magnitude of the event itself and its exceptional nature, but to the significance they have in the character’s consciousness. From this point of view, the novel that best represents Woolf’s perception is Mrs Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway experiences her moments of being while in the middle of trivial acts; it is not the action, but her awareness that sets a moment of being apart from other experiences. As an essayist she defended the dignity of women, their right to equal opportunities, and the acknowledgement for the difference of feminine feeling by analysing the limitations imposed on women inside the patriarchal system. A Room of One’s Own is an essay about the need for women to have ‘a room of their own’, i.e. a literal and metaphorical space for creation and for public recognition in male-dominated literature. In the book the character of Judith Shakespeare, the dramatist’s imaginary sister, follows a path of ruin and misery not because she is lacking either talent or ambition, but because she is a woman and so won’t be sent to Grammar school, and she will receive no fame for her writing. Judith not only represents Woolf herself, who never went to university despite her brilliant mind, but also all women who are denied education and the possibility to develop their minds through writing because they are women, only destined for marriage and raising a family. In Three Guineas she confronted the issue of educated women’s ‘influence’ in modern society. By 1938, when the risk of a male-driven Second World War was imminent, she demanded that women be given a role in social life for the improvement of society as a whole.

1 Match each word (1–6) to its definition (a–f). 1

recurrence

institutionalised

trivial

overlapping

discordance

worthy

a no harmony b kept in an institution for mental illness c an event happening again d partly coinciding e having hardly any importance f deserving

Style ▲ Nicole Kidman in a scene from the film The Hours (2002), an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel, concerning three generations of women affected by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

366

Woolf explored people’s inner mental experience (memories, sudden thoughts, hidden feelings) as it is created in the flux of the mind, with the past overlapping the present and making consciousness the only reality worthy of the writer’s attention and attempt to form a pattern. This pattern is the result of the mind or minds of characters discovering affinities and discordances, also when conventional realism would see none. Mrs Dalloway finds renewed energy for life in accidentally

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1882 Virginia Woolf was born in London to Sir Leslie Stephen, a well-known essayist and editor, and Julia Jackson, a sensitive aristocratic woman. The family spent their summers at Talland House, Cornwall, where she grew to love the sea.

1895 KEY FACT Her mother died and she had her first mental breakdown.

1904 Her father died and she had another breakdown; the family moved to Bloomsbury, the area near the British Museum.

1912 KEY FACT She married Leonard Woolf. Their home was confirmed as the meeting point for the Bloomsbury Group.

1913 She attempted suicide six months after completing her first novel, The Voyage Out.

1917 KEY FACT The Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press, which was to publish most of Virginia’s works. 1927

1915

WORKS

They said of this…

Virginia, a friend to people Virginia non negherà mai che la vita abbia bisogno di forma, non una forma però che la chiuda, la sigilli in un che di statico, perché così la tradirebbe. Ci sono alcune creature umane – Virginia è una di queste – che scoprono in sé il dono di una misura conquistata sempre in bilico, e ne danno espressione senza sforzo; […] Per altre creature umane – per te, come per me, amico lettore – per noi che sentiamo di non riuscire a conseguire l’unità della nostra vita e ci aggiriamo perplessi di fronte ai molti sentieri in cui inseguirla, intimoriti, incerti, inesperti, epperò pronti, questo sì, sempre pronti a lasciarci afferrare e trasportare da chi più fortemente vive per noi, la lettura delle opere di Virginia, la conoscenza della sua vita adempirà a un compito non diverso da quello delle vite dei santi, modello laico di un antico bisogno di guida.

1922

Jacob’s Room

To the Lighthouse p. 372

1925

1928

1931

1929

1938

The Common Reader

The Voyage Out

IN ACTION

Mrs Dalloway p. 368

Orlando A Room of One’s Own

1941 On March 28th Virginia drowned herself in the river Ouse.

1941

The Waves

Between the Acts

Three Guineas

hearing the news of the suicide of a man, Septimus, whom she had never heard of before. Similarly, Lily Briscoe, the painter at the end of To the Lighthouse, fills in the time gap of ten years between the first and third part of the novel with her consciousness that the much-awaited trip to the lighthouse is ‘the same’ in Part 3 in all the characters’ perceptions. Like Joyce, Woolf abandoned traditional plot and time sequences, and developed the interior monologue for the continuous stream of consciousness of the characters’ minds. While Joyce and Faulkner separate one character’s interior monologues from another’s, Woolf’s narratives move between the characters’ consciousness deliberately avoiding marking the transition. The narrator is external, non-omniscient, and employs shifting focalisation on the same event to suggest the subjectivity of perception. Her prose is often poetic. She used highly figurative language and paid great attention to rhythm and musicality.

MIND MAP

extremely sensitive person – bipolar disorder

Virginia Woolf

essayist

definition of Modernism defence of women’s dignity

consciousness and flux of the mind

poetic language

‘moments of beings’

interior monologue

external non-omniscient narrator

(From Nadia Fusini, Possiedo la mia anima, 2006)

2 Mediation 1 Summarise Fusini’s thoughts about Woolf’s relationship to life and what she can offer readers in a few words.

1940–41 The Woolfs moved to their country house in Sussex to escape the air raids in London.

shifting focalisation

CHECK OUT

2 Are your feelings about life like Fusini’s, or is your view different?

1 Answer the questions.

3 Do you think that literature can help people to make sense of their lives?

2 How did she develop the Modernist novel and the ‘moments of being’?

1 How did Woolf experience her mental illness? 3 What contribution did she make to feminist literature? 4 What characterises her style?

Ideas for your map: CONSCIOUSNESS

p. 437

367

AUTHORS AND WORKS The stream-ofconsciousness novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

Mrs Dalloway (1925) Mrs Dalloway covers one day, from morning to night, in the life of Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, and of Septimus Warren Smith, a World War I veteran who suffers from shell shock and commits suicide near the end of the day. They never meet, but Clarissa identifies with this stranger when the news of his suicide is accidentally given at her dinner party.

Characters • Clarissa Dalloway Clarissa Dalloway is an upper-class housewife. In the past she sacrificed her passion for Peter Walsh for a secure life with her husband Richard. She realises that her present life is rather superficial, with fashion and parties the main concerns. Like Septimus, she knows that life can be oppressive, and she has to confront the ideas of old age and death during the day. However, her will to endure life prevails in the end. Her mind is constantly exposed to the reader in her interior monologues while externally she appears engaged only in gossiping and chattering.

• Septimus Warren Smith Septimus is a working-class veteran from WWI and suffers from shell shock. He has hallucinations and talks to a dead friend, Evans. He was a poet and a lover of Shakespeare before the war, but now he perceives beauty only occasionally. He is numb and insensitive and remains apart from reality, where all he sees is dishonesty and rudeness. At the end of the novel, he commits suicide. He acts as a sort of alter ego to Clarissa. Their thoughts run parallel in the novel, she being the ‘sane’ and he being the ‘insane’ part of the same personality.

THE PLOT The novel is set in London, on a mid-June day (a Wednesday) in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway walks through her London neighbourhood to prepare for the party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, Peter Walsh visits her. He once proposed to her, but she rejected him. The narrative shifts to Septimus and Lucrezia, his wife, spending time in Regent’s Park. Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist, visits Septimus, who has become insensitive after the horrors of trench war and has suicidal thoughts, which he confesses to the doctor. The psychiatrist only diagnoses ‘a lack of proportion‘ and proposes sending him to a mental institution in the country. Richard Dalloway returns home with a bunch of roses for his wife, but can’t tell her he loves her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth, her daughter, and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are going shopping. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia enjoy a moment of happiness together in their apartment. One of Septimus’ doctors, Dr Holmes, arrives, and Septimus, fearing the doctor will destroy his soul, commits suicide by jumping from a window. Peter Walsh hears an ambulance passing by while going to Clarissa’s party, where most of the novel’s main characters are gathered. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that one of his patients, a young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa identifies with Septimus, and feels responsible for his death. The party nears its end as the guests begin to leave. ◀ Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs Dalloway in the 1997 film adaptation of the novel

Structure Most of the narrative consists of a mosaic of reminiscences, considerations about past and present situations, impressions which build up the continuous fluidity of life, and are measured by the striking of the hours: the characters’ minds are presented no longer in linear progression, but in an alternation of flashbacks and present actions. 368

The Modern Age – Authors and works

Virginia Woolf IN ACTION

Themes

Web quest

• Time

1 Many soldiers with shell shock in WWI then developed what is now CSR, combat stress reaction, known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Today it is recognised as a mental health condition that develops after surviving or witnessing a real or perceived traumatic event. Search the web to find films that focus on this condition, and discuss with the class the differences between how it was seen in the early 20th century as compared to now.

For Woolf, memory and the past are inherently linked with the present. Clarissa Dalloway embraces the past, Peter Walsh entertains himself with it, and traumatised Septimus Warren Smith unsuccessfully tries to push it away. By simultaneously emphasising Big Ben’s chiming of the hours (the novel’s provisional title was The Hours) and the ubiquity of past memories, Woolf shows the fluidity of time, both linear (the chiming of the hours) and circular (the characters experiencing their past in the present of their consciousness).

• Oppression and death Clarissa lives under the weight of the repressive social system and the pressure on everyone to conform; Septimus succumbs to it by killing himself. It is this perception of a collective guilt that makes Clarissa feel responsible for his death. She also has a strong sense of imminent death, which for Clarissa is the consequence of her many losses: first of all, the war itself, and then her personal losses (her father, mother and sister have died). The chiming of Big Ben is a reminder of the inevitable march of time. Her moment of being as she walks near Big Ben in the first pages of the novel is followed by a memory of her youth and the tolling of the hour. At that point, she repeats to herself a few lines from a funeral song (from William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline), which celebrates death as peace after a life of pain. Her acceptance of her own mortality thanks to her empathic understanding of Septimus’ suicide opens her to a renewed perseverance of life.

• British society after WWI and the end of the Empire Mrs Dalloway presents the social difficulties of post-WWI, with huge financial losses and thousands of soldiers dead in the conflict, and the beginning of the dissolution of the British Empire. Septimus has fought bravely for his country, but now his mental suffering is treated as weakness, as often happened with soldiers from WWI trench warfare ( p. 388). Through him, Woolf comments on both the effects of World War I on veterans and the inadequate treatment of mental illness in early 20th-century Britain. Similarly, the English upper classes ignored all signs of crisis, and were highly conservative. MIND MAP

Clarissa Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway

Septimus Warren Smith

passing of time

superficial oppressive life

shell shock – insensitive – suicidal

memory

will to endure

alter ego to Clarissa

chiming of Big Ben

post-World War I society

collective guilt

impending death

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–6) to its correct half (a–f). 1

Clarissa and Septimus both confront

a the continuous fluidity of life.

Both Clarissa and Septimus find society

b treated and he kills himself.

Septimus’ mental condition is not adequately

c the idea of death during the day.

Reminiscences and impressions build up

d oppressive.

Memory and the past are inherently

e both linear and circular.

In the novel, time is

f linked with the present.

Ideas for your map: TIME

p. 437

369

Authors and works The stream-ofconsciousness novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T58 Out for flowers

Mrs Dalloway

On a June morning, Mrs Dalloway is out to buy flowers for her house, where she is giving a party after some weeks of bad influenza. She is in Victoria Street, and Big Ben strikes the hour nearby.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

June • cross • striking • Big Ben in Westminster, London, on one (2)

Clarissa is in Victoria Street, near (1) morning. She is about to (3)

the street and Scrope Purvis, Mrs Dalloway’s neighbour,

observes her as she stands on the kerb. She can hear Big Ben (4)

the hour.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Meryl Streep in a scene from the film The Hours (2002)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What does Scrope Purvis think of Clarissa’s appearance? 2 Is Clarissa aware of her neighbour’s presence? 3 What ‘event’ is Mrs Dalloway unconsciously waiting for? 4 What can Clarissa hear?

She stiffened a little on the kerb1, waiting for Durtnall’s van2 to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay3, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched4, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright. For having lived in Westminster – how many 5 years now? over twenty, – one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive5, a particular hush6, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense7 (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! out it boomed8. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden9 circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven 10 only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh10; but the veriest frumps11, the most dejected of miseries12 sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall13) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason14: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar15; the carriages, motor cars, 15 omnibuses16, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging17; brass bands18, barrel organs19; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing20 of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

1 She stiffened... kerb: Si irrigidì un poco sull’orlo del marciapiede 2 Durtnall’s van: il furgone di Durtnall (una ditta) 3 a touch... jay: (aveva) qualcosa di un uccellino, della ghiandaia (la ghiandaia è un passero molto comune, che raccoglie ghiande, a migliaia, e che ricorda perfettamente dove le ha riposte) 4 There she perched: Stava là appollaiata 5 was positive: ne era sicura 6 hush: calma

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7 a suspense: un senso di attesa 8 out it boomed: ecco il rintocco 9 leaden: di piombo 10 For Heaven... afresh: poiché Dio solo sa perché l’amiamo così (it = la vita), la vediamo così, ce la facciamo così, costruendola attorno al nostro io, per poi scomporla e ricrearla da capo ogni momento 11 the veriest frumps: anche le donne più sciatte e trascurate 12 the… miseries: gli esseri più miseri e avviliti 13 drink their downfall: istupiditi dal bere

14 can’t be dealt... reason: per quella precisa ragione (l’attaccamento alla vita) non c’è legge che possa domarli 15 in the swing... uproar: nel loro andamento lento, faticoso, nel chiasso e nel frastuono 16 omnibuses: autobus 17 shuffling and swinging: che camminano strascicando e ondeggiando 18 brass bands: bande (di ottoni) 19 barrel organs: organetti 20 in the triumph... singing: nel suono trionfante e nello strano canto

Virginia Woolf ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What makes the chiming of the bell exceptional and irrevocable for Clarissa, her ‘moment of being’? 2 What is her perception of life in her thoughts? 3 The extract consists almost exclusively of interior monologues, in the form of indirect thought and free indirect thought. What focalisations are present in the extract? 4 What does the symbolism add to the perception the reader has of Mrs Dalloway? INTERPRET 4 Rewrite the scene, omitting anything that is in the characters’ minds, and look at what is left. What does the interior monologue change in the readers’ perception of characters and meaning?

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The Days of Afrekete (2021) by Asali Solomon Award-winning Asali Solomon is the author of three successful works, which have been featured in several black culture magazines. Her first book, Get Down (2006), is a collection of stories that are mostly set in Philadelphia, where she was born and raised. She is also the author of two other novels, Disgruntled and The Days of Afrekete, which explore the lives of women in different periods of their lives. Solomon teaches fiction writing and literature of the African diaspora at Haverford College.

Two women at midlife who rediscover themselves Inspired by famous black American works Sula by Toni Morrison and Zami by Audre Lorde as well as by Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Days of Afrekete is a tender, funny, and deeply intelligent novel exploring the lives of two middleaged women, Liselle and Selena, and how their relationship affects them across decades of personal growth. Through the story of the two characters, the reader is given the chance to reflect on how choices made long ago keep influencing our lives and how the bonds of true love might be strained but never break. This novel nods to Virginia Woolf while staring down modern class lines.

“

thought reached out and grabbed her. With the same reckless spirit, with which A she’d hung up on her mother, she dialed another number she was shocked to find she remembered. ‘Is Selena there?‘

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Caleb’s review of the book and use the questions for a class discussion. 1 How do you think your relationship with your teen friends will shape your future personality?

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

2 Have you ever wondered whether other people see you the way you see yourself? 3 How do you expect to change in 40 years’ time? 371

Authors and works The stream-ofconsciousness novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From To the Lighthouse DT49 Lily’s vision

To the Lighthouse (1927) In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf rejects the conventional idea of ‘conflict’ and eliminates traditional plot. The only significant event in the novel is the trip to the lighthouse, planned but postponed to ‘the day after’ in Part 1, and actually taken only in Part 3, after ten years, with Lily Briscoe, a painter, simultaneously completing a picture. Although the trip to the lighthouse in Part 3 is not the one postponed so many years before, the characters, and Lily in particular as she completes her abstract painting, perceive it as the same. Consciousness has bridged the gap between the two days, and given unity and meaning to the events. In characterisation the roles of protagonist and antagonist are abandoned. In Part 1 Mrs Ramsay is opposed to Mr Ramsay and their conflict is given some prominence but she dies in Part 2, and her death is briefly reported in one parenthetical line.

THE PLOT The novel focuses on two single days, one in Part 1 and the other in Part 3, separated by a ten-year period which is narrated impersonally in Part 2. Part 1 – The Window Just before the start of World War I, Mr Ramsay, a philosopher, and Mrs Ramsay, his wife, bring their eight children and some friends (Lily Briscoe, a young painter, Charles Tansley, a philosopher, William Bankes, a botanist, Augustus Carmichael, an unknown poet, and Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle) to their summer home in the Hebrides. Six-year-old James Ramsay wants to go to the lighthouse across the bay, and Mrs Ramsay tells him that they will go the next day if the weather permits. During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begins a painting, Mrs Ramsay comforts James, who is angry because his father told him that the weather is going to be bad the next day, and Mr Ramsay turns to Mrs Ramsay for comfort. The Ramsays and their guests have dinner together, and some tensions arise among them, but after dinner they all come together and Mrs Ramsay shares a moment of intimacy and understanding with her husband. Part 2 – Time Passes War breaks out across Europe. Ten years are narrated in an impersonal way, through the decay of the abandoned summer home. Mrs Ramsay and two of her children, Andrew and Prew, die. Part 3 – The Lighthouse Mr Ramsay, James Ramsay and his sister Cam go back to the summer home with Lily Briscoe and other guests. Mr Ramsay declares that he will go to the lighthouse with his children. The Ramsays set off, and Lily begins completing the painting she had begun on her last visit. The boat reaches the lighthouse and Lily puts the finishing touches to her painting. She has achieved her vision.

▶ Edward Hopper, The Lighthouse

at Two Lights (1929)

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

Virginia Woolf IN ACTION

Characters

Web quest

• Mrs Ramsay

1 Henri Bergson used the metaphor of a snowball becoming bigger and bigger as it incorporates more and more memories to describe the consciousness growing. Search the web to read more about his theories or refer to your philosophy textbook, and choose a metaphor of your own to describe your perception of the consciousness.

Her consciousness rather than her personality is at the heart of conflict in Part 1. Her attempt at unifying and beautifying everybody and everything often clashes with a deep delusion. However, she always finds renewed energies to begin her personal wandering through her summer house and her own life, for example when she tries to reassure her son James that they will go to the lighthouse if the weather is good. With her death she simply disappears from the narrative, thus proving that the realistic coherence of protagonist-conflict is no longer necessary in the Modernist novel.

• Lily Briscoe The artist takes up Mrs Ramsay’s role many years later as the centre of conflict. Her role as a painter completing her work and her vision makes her more of a culmination of Mrs Ramsay’s consciousness rather than a substitute for her personality.

Themes • Consciousness and time In Modern Fiction, Woolf states her view of the consciousness and how its workings should be presented in the stream-of-consciousness novel. In Virginia Woolf’s novels, minds are immense worlds, each imprisoned in its own individuality, and each struggling to connect to the others. Narrative time, e.g. the time the narrator needs to recount the characters’ doings, expands to include the flowing of the consciousness, which may transform one minute into an endless experience. Ordinary events such as knitting a pair of stockings are as relevant to the understanding of the mind as ‘special’ events such as making a marriage proposal or even the death of the main character. Time present, past and future – what one is doing, remembering or expecting – exist simultaneously in the mind, as presented in Henri Bergson’s theory of time as duration (p. 340).

• Art Both Mr Carmichael and Lily Briscoe are artists, and they both witness the arrival of the boat at the lighthouse in Part 3. The painting Lily completes in Part 3 arrives through her self-doubts about her own art – Mrs Ramsay’s orchestration of herself, her family, and her guests is her own search for beauty, but her ‘artistic construction’ is interrupted at the end of Part 1. Only Lily, the pure artist, can bring the novel to its conclusion with her vision. This is a liberation for Lily, much in the same way as the publication of one novel momentarily ended Woolf’s anxiety about its value and success.

MIND MAP

To the Lighthouse

no plot

unconventional characterisation

mind flow – consciousness

art

trip to the lighthouse

Mrs Ramsay – Lily Briscoe

time as duration

vision of beauty

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who are the main characters in To the Lighthouse, and how does Woolf deal with them? 2 Why is art important to Woolf in To the Lighthouse?

Ideas for your map: TIME/CONSCIOUSNESS

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Authors and works The stream-ofconsciousness novel LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

T59 Dinner together 66 To the Lighthouse

Mrs Ramsay is having dinner with her family and guests: William Bankes, the botanist, Lily Briscoe, the painter, Charles Tansley, the philosopher, Augustus Carmichael, the poet, and Paul Rayley, who has just proposed to Minta Doyle that afternoon.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

seated • room • table-cloth • observes • table • serve • guests Mrs Ramsay takes her place at the (1) (2)

. More (3)

and has Mrs William Bankes and Lily Briscoe enter the room. Mrs Ramsay has Charles Tansley and

Augustus Carmichael seated and then she sits down to (4) (5)

dinner. She looks around the

and asks William Bankes a question. Lily Briscoe (6)

doing all this and then lifts the salt cellar and places it on the (7)

Mrs Ramsay .

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ John Singer Sargent, A Dinner Table at Night (1884)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Where is Mrs Ramsay’s place at the table? 2 Where does Mr Ramsay sit? 3 Does Mrs Ramsay feel close to her husband?

4 Are her thoughts in accordance with her actions? 5 What does she think of the dining room and her guests?

But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making white circles on it. “William, sit by me,” she said. “Lily,” she said, wearily1, “over there.” They had that—Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle2—she, only this—an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning3. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She 5 could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She had a sense of being past4 everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped5 the soup, as if there was an eddy6—there—and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it. It’s all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after another, Charles Tansley—“Sit there, please,” she said—Augustus Carmichael—and sat down. And 10 meanwhile she waited, passively, for some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says. Raising her eyebrows7 at the discrepancy—that was what she was thinking, this was what she was doing—ladling out soup—she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and, robbed8 of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round 15 it) was very shabby9. There was no beauty anywhere. She forebore to look at Mr. Tansley. Nothing seemed to have merged10. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested11 on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving herself a little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the 20 watch begins ticking—one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering12 the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak

1 wearily: stancamente 2 Mrs Ramsay sta pensando alla proposta di matrimonio che Paul ha fatto nel pomeriggio a Minta. 3 frowning: con l’aria imbronciata

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4 past: oltre 5 helped: serviva 6 eddy: vortice 7 Raising her eyebrows: Aggrottando le sopracciglia 8 robbed: derubata

9 shabby: trasandata, logora 10 merged: fuso 11 rested: gravava 12 sheltering and fostering: proteggendo e alimentando

Virginia Woolf

6 What makes her find again the energy to live?

7 Does Lily understand how Mrs Ramsay is actually feeling?

8 What does moving the salt mean to Lily?

flame with a newspaper. And so then, she concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William Bankes—poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong enough to 25 bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off13 again and thinks how, had the ship sunk14, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea. “Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for you,” she said to William Bankes. Lily Briscoe watched her drifting15 into that strange no-man’s land where to follow 30 people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such a chill16 on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have sunk beneath the horizon. How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily thought, and how remote. Then when she turned to William Bankes, smiling, it was as if the ship had turned and the sun had struck its 35 sails again, and Lily thought with some amusement because she was relieved17, Why does she pity him? For that was the impression she gave, when she told him that his letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying people, and the life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred18 by pity. And it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those misjudgements of hers that seemed to be 40 instinctive and to arise from some need of her own rather than of other people’s. He is not in the least pitiable. He has his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward19 space. That’s what I shall do. That’s what has been puzzling me20. She took up the salt cellar21 and put it 45 down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree. (From Part 1 - “The Window”, Chapter 17)

13 be off: partire 14 had the ship sunk: if the ship had sunk 15 drifting: svanire

16 chill: gelo 17 relieved: sollevata 18 stirred: mossa 19 awkward: problematico

20 has… me: mi ha dato da pensare 21 salt cellar: saliera

ANALYSE 3 Choose all the statements that correctly describe Lily Briscoe’s thoughts.

5 What does the figurative language, especially the similes concerning the sea, convey? Choose the best option.

At first Lily is impressed by Mrs Ramsay’s incredible vitality.

Then she realises that Mrs Ramsay is stuck in inaction.

he guesses that Mrs Ramsay’s renewed vitality stems from the S lady’s pity for William Bankes.

L ily associates William Bankes with herself because neither needs anyone’s compassion.

he moves the salt cellar and tells her neighbour that she has found S a good arrangement for her painting.

4 How do direct and indirect thoughts relate in the presentation of the women’s minds? Choose the best option. a

hey are clearly separated, and each is associated with one T character only.

hey continuously merge, but each character shows a preference T for one mode over the other.

T hey continuously merge so as to reproduce the workings of the characters’ minds in a similar way.

E ndless unsafe wandering, similar to the exploration of the consciousness by the narrator.

Peace and calm, because they are centred on the sea and its beauty.

E xcited expectation, connected to the endless wanderings of man at sea. INTERPRET

6 Mrs Ramsay has been interpreted as the symbol of all Victorian mothers, dedicated to their families and similar to Virginia’s own mother, while Lily Briscoe is the new modern woman, an artist like Virginia herself. Do you think this interpretation is valid? PDF

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WOMEN THAT The women that broke MADE HISTORY the glass ceiling

AGENDA 2030

The first half of the 20th century saw many women break the glass ceiling in several areas, such as flying, science, political activism, fashion and even computer programming. Some rose to popularity almost immediately, but others had to wait decades before having their roles recognised in their fields of expertise.

Marie Curie (1867–1934), a Polish and naturalised French physicist and chemist, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1903, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields, physics and chemistry. The brilliant research and analyses she conducted with her husband led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie’s birth, and radium. She promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering; together with her daughter, she helped many wounded soldiers during WWI.

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937), American aviator, was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She disappeared near Howland Island, central Pacific Ocean, during a flight around the world on 2nd July 1937. Her last confirmed words were spoken in the early morning, but just before that she was reported admitting that she was in trouble. After that communications were interrupted and neither her body nor her plane were ever found. Only in 2018 the forensic analysis of some bones found on a remote Pacific island 80 years earlier suggests that these bones may be Amelia’s.

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Coco Chanel, nickname of Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883–1971), French fashion creator, was the first designer to abolish complicated, uncomfortable clothes, such as underskirts and corsets, and to create a casual female style that has remained unique in the history of fashion. She created her unique style with the Chanel suit, the quilted purse1, jewellery, and ‘the little black dress’2. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, is still an icon of class, with the famed interlocked-CC monogram that Chanel designed in the 1920s. 1 quilted purse: borsetta trapuntata 2 the little black dress: il tubino nero

Rosa Parks (1913–2005), American activist in the civil rights movement, was honoured by the United States Congress as ‘the first lady of civil rights‘ and ‘the mother of the freedom movement‘. On December 1st, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey the order of a bus driver, who wanted her to stand up and leave an entire row of seats in the ‘colored’ section to a white person who could not find one in the ‘white section’. She was arrested for violating Alabama segregation laws.

Frances Spence, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Jean Bartik and Kathleen Antonelli were a group of six American physicists and mathematicians. They programmed the electronic general-purpose computer ENIAC without any formal coding language. Their ability at programming was so impressive that they were known as ‘The Computers’. In the end, they taught the machine, which was as big as a room, to ‘think’. However, their contribution was long ‘forgotten’ by the government because they were women. Finally in 1997, all six of them were inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How significant was the role played by these women in their area of expertise/field of work? 2 Who do you find most interesting among these women? Do you know of other figures who also broke the glass ceiling, maybe in politics or visual arts?

WEB QUEST 2 Search the web for more information concerning these women, and explain to the class what you think helped them to achieve their impressive results. You can add some figures of your own.

Ideas for your map: HUMAN RIGHTS

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist fiction LEARNING DIGITAL K atherine Mansfield and The Garden Party PDF

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

The Garden Party: full plot

Profile Mansfield’s works represented for the short story the Modernist revolution that Joyce and Woolf were for the novel. Her brother’s death reconciled her with the landscape and reality of New Zealand, whose life she had found slow and oppressive and from which she had escaped to live in Europe. She revived her youth and the memories of her mother country in her stories. Mansfield admired the Russian writer Anton Chekhov with his choice of everyday events, his approach to the psychology of his characters, and a focus on character over plot. Mansfield herself wrote of her personal and literary admiration for the Russian writer, who suffered from tuberculosis as she did. She claimed that what she had learnt from Chekhov was the right length of a short story, and the race against time of the writer, who lives in fear of imminent death. She abandoned linear narrative to build up each story through the accumulation of finely observed, apparently unimportant moments which revolve round the ‘psychological moment’ and the speeches, or gestures, of characters. In her stories, conflict rises from the opposition between the protagonist and an antagonistic force (another character, social norms, or the protagonist him/herself), and both Joyce and Mansfield present characters in moments of epiphany.

The Garden Party (1922) The Garden Party is Mansfield’s most important collection, and the eponymous short story explores the question of what happens when a young woman, Laura Sheridan, attempts to cross the confines that divide the upper-class world that she inhabits from the lower classes surrounding her. She experiences the passage from innocence into maturity on the occasion of her encounter with the mystery of death.

Characters • Laura Sheridan Often seen as an autobiographical depiction of a young Mansfield, Laura is a round character. She is naturally curious, which pushes her out of her family’s comfort zone. She responds to beauty with sincere pleasure, whether it is the perfume of lavender in the garden or the unexpected beauty of Mr Scott’s dead face. Laura struggles between her sense of duty and belonging to her family and her desire to explore a broader world. At the beginning of the story, Laura is uncomfortable about working-class people because she is not used to speaking to them. Mr Scott’s death brings her physically and spiritually into their world. She is shocked and, though momentarily distracted by the charming hat her mother gives her, she symbolically enters the Scotts’ house to her epiphany, her understanding of life and death.

• Mrs Sheridan Mrs Sheridan represents the upper-class woman totally sheltered by wealth and privilege from the troubles of the poor. A controlling figure in the Sheridan family, her unsympathetic response to the news of Mr Scott’s death differentiates her from her daughter, and she remains a static character. 378

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1888 Katherine Mansfield (née Beauchamp) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. Her education was quite conservative, and she found it unbearable.

1903–06 As part of her upbringing, she attended Queen’s College in London with her sisters and she travelled around Europe.

1907 KEY FACT After a period in Wellington, she went back to London, where she led a turbulent life with many affairs, also with women.

1909 She married George Bowden, but left him one day after their wedding.

1915 KEY FACT She met her brother Leslie just some months before he died in in World War I. She took refuge from his death in nostalgic reminiscences of their childhood in New Zealand.

WORKS

1918 She married John Middleton Murry, a famous literary critic, but theirs was not a happy marriage. 1920

1923 Tuberculosis killed her at the age of 34, after she had tried several therapies and travelled abroad in search of a warmer climate.

Bliss

1922

The Garden Party p. 378

1923

The Dove’s Nest (posthumous)

1924

Something Childish (posthumous)

THE PLOT IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 to revive = to lose / regain strength 2 to relinquish = to give up / out 3 to patronise = to treat somebody with kindness / superiority 4 to confront = to come face to face with / to blows

The wealthy Sheridan family throw a garden party at their estate on an early summer day. Four workmen have to set up the marquee (a large outdoor tent), and Laura, instructed by her mother, briefly talks to them about where to set it up. The florist brings in trays of beautiful pink canna lilies, which Mrs Sheridan ordered the day before. Laura’s sisters, Meg and Jose, and their servant, Hans, make room to accommodate the piano. Jose tests it and then sings a song in case she is asked to do so during the party. After checking the food in the kitchen, Laura and Jose learn that their working-class neighbour Mr Scott, a cart-driver, died in an accident that morning. The servants are horrified and Laura feels the party should be cancelled, but nobody in her family agrees. Mrs Sheridan gives Laura her hat to distract her, and Laura changes her mind. After the party, Mrs Sheridan decides to send Laura to take some leftover food to the Scotts. In the house, Laura sees the corpse and finds the body peaceful. She runs out crying and her brother tries to console her, but hers are tears of joy. She can’t explain to him what she has understood about life and death.

Themes • Social classes The two neighbouring families, the wealthy, upper-class Sheridans and the working-class Scotts, are brought into contact by the news of Mr Scott’s death in an accident. The Sheridans’ lack of response to the tragedy as well as their patronising attitude to their own servants – with the single exception of Laura – shows that the upper classes remain indifferent to the lives of others through frivolous distraction and entertainment.

• Death and maturity In Mansfield’s stories, death often brings about reflection and a step forward into maturity. In confronting the reality of death, Laura is surprised to find the dead man’s face ‘wonderful’ and ‘happy’. She is unable to fully communicate her experience with death at the conclusion of the story, suggesting that her epiphany cannot be expressed in words.

Symbols The garden party represents the deliberate isolation of the Sheridans’ world. Their garden is full of flowers and it reflects the family’s superficiality and obsession with status. Laura’s new hat is decorated with gold daisies, a sort of metaphorical crown. In contrast, the Scotts’ garden grows cabbages, a food source. Only Laura and one of the workmen in her garden appreciate the smell of lavender, which suggests that the upper classes see beauty only as a symbol of class distinction and wealth. Also, the imagery of light and dark underlines the contrast between the upper and working classes: the Sheridans’ house and garden are light and spacious, while the Scotts’ property is dark and depressing. ▲ Philip Leslie Hale, The Crimson Rambler (1908)

Ideas for your map: GROWTH

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist fiction

A coming-of-age story As a young woman, Laura still depends on adults but desires an identity of her own, and has to separate herself from her mother. During the party, Mrs Sheridan pretends she has relinquished responsibility for it, but she actually does all the planning. Laura falls under her influence, symbolically represented by her fascination with her own image with her mother’s hat on, but she successfully finds her true spirit thanks to her compassion, curiosity and the ‘encounter’ with death. MIND MAP

New Zealand

Katherine Mansfield

Modernist short story

The Garden Party

Anton Chekhov’s psychology of characters

Laura Sheridan – round character

Mrs Sheridan – static character

coming-of-age story

symbolism garden: superficiality and status

moments of epiphany

epiphany of life and death – maturity

light and dark

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How important was Mansfield’s activity as a short-story writer?

4 How does Mansfield present death?

2 Who influenced Mansfield in her writing?

5 What symbols are present in The Garden Party?

3 Who are the two main characters in The Garden Party?

6 Why is The Garden Party a coming-of-age story?

T60 A dead man, and a fancy hat 67 The Garden Party

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Laura has just learnt that Mr Scott, a cart-driver who lives in a cottage down the hill, has died in a horrible accident, leaving his wife and five children to fend for themselves. She goes to her mother as she thinks that they should not have their party in the garden.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. doubting • nonsense • convinced • aside • image • angry

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Laura goes to her mother’s room, (1)

that Mrs Sheridan will agree that they can’t have

the party with the band and music in the garden, since their neighbour, Mr Scott, has died. She is surprised to see that her mother considers her request (2) Sheridan gets (3)

. Then she puts her fancy hat on Laura’s head, but Laura refuses to look

at herself in the mirror. Back in her room she catches her (4) and charming in her hat. She starts (5) Mr Scott’s death (6)

The Modern Age – Authors and works

in the mirror, so beautiful

whether she is right and puts the thought of

until the party is over.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

380

, and when she insists, Mrs

Katherine Mansfield UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What is Mrs Sheridan doing?

2 Why is she relieved?

3 Does she want to keep talking with her daughter?

4 Is Laura sure of herself?

“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob. “Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was trying on a new hat. “Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura. 5 “Not in the garden?” interrupted her mother. “No, no!” “Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat and held it on her knees. “But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. “Of course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she pleaded. “The band and everybody 10 arriving. They’d hear us, mother; they’re nearly neighbours!” To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously. “But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve heard of it. If some one had died there normally – and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those 15 poky little holes – we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?” Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat down on her mother’s sofa and pinched the cushion frill. “Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked. “Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat. Before Laura 20 could stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you. It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And she held up her hand-mirror. “But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she turned aside. 25 This time Mrs. Sheridan lost patience just as Jose had done. “You are being very absurd, Laura,” she said coldly. “People like that don’t expect sacrifices from us. And it’s not very sympathetic to spoil everybody’s enjoyment as you’re doing now.” “I don’t understand,” said Laura, and she walked quickly out of the room into her own bedroom. There, quite by chance, the first thing she saw was this charming girl in the 30 mirror, in her black hat trimmed with gold daisies, and a long black velvet ribbon. Never had she imagined she could look like that. Is mother right? she thought. And now she hoped her mother was right. Am I being extravagant? Perhaps it was extravagant. Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those little children, and the body being carried into the house. But it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I’ll 35 remember it again after the party’s over, she decided. And somehow that seemed quite the best plan...

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 How does Laura reveal her sensitive nature? 2 How does Mrs Sheridan consider people from the lower classes?

INTERPRET 4 Laura is young and easily influenced. What can help a young person to develop their personality and to resist other people’s influences, even their own parents’?

3 What is the hat a synecdoche for? Consider the problem of class, the relationship between Laura and her mother, and how Laura perceives herself with her new hat on. 4 What effect is achieved by comment and indirect thought with Mrs Sheridan and Laura respectively? PDF

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381

George Orwell

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(1903–1950)

Dystopian novel LEARNING DIGITAL G eorge Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four Down and Out in Paris and London DT50 Poverty hungers you, but worse than ever, it changes you

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IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Orwell was a committed socialist who wanted to promote a fairer and more egalitarian society. He fought against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. In the Spanish Civil War, he first developed his rejection of Stalinism as a model for Socialism; he sided with the Republican Militia, who identified with Trotsky’s Socialism rather than Stalin’s, and he described it in Homage to Catalonia, his account of his participation in the Spanish Civil War. The Purge Trials in the Soviet Union, which killed three million people and sent millions of others to forced labour camps, and the 1939 non-aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler deeply disgusted Orwell and he condemned Soviet-style Communism.

1 Match each word to its correct definition. 1

totalitarianism

doublethinking

a the ability to accept contradictory statements as correct b a form of government that control all aspects of people’s lives with no freedom and individuality

MIND MAP

Themes and style Orwell’s novels deal with social themes, such as the condition of the working classes in the first half of the 20th century, and with political themes: the danger of totalitarianism, the exploitation of the masses, the lies of official information and the failure of revolutionary ideals. He wanted to turn political writing into an art. The language a writer uses should be simple, but first of all clear and direct, so as to become an actual instrument of information and communication. In his preface to the Ukrainian edition to Animal Farm, Orwell said that he wanted to write the book in simple language because he wanted to tell ordinary English people, who had enjoyed a tradition of justice and liberty for centuries, what a totalitarian system was like. He wrote the book to destroy the ‘Soviet myth’ that Russia was a truly socialist society. The novel is a political fable about a farm revolution which parallels both Communism as a theory and the Bolshevik Revolution, followed by Lenin’s and then Stalin’s regimes. The animals give themselves Seven Commandments but the most important one, ‘All animals are equal‘, is finally modified to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others‘. This is an example of doublethinking, a key concept of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this work, Orwell abandoned the animal allegory for a depiction of perfect totalitarianism, where the masses are manipulated, and their revolutions are doomed to failure by a lack of unifying values and of class-consciousness.

George Orwell

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What did Orwell think of Stalin’s Communism?

committed socialist

social-political themes

clear direct language

2 How did his participation in the Spanish Civil War influence him? 3 What should political writing be like according to Orwell?

condemnation of Soviet-style Communism 382

totalitarianism

The Modern Age – Authors and works

4 What is the ideal purpose of language, and how should it be?

LIFE 1903 George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) was born in India, but studied in England. At Eton, he began to develop his intellectual interests.

1922 KEY FACT He went back to Burma as an officer in the Indian Imperial Police, but resented the oppression of English imperialism and resigned.

1928 He moved to Paris, where he took up several jobs and finally chose journalism. 1933

WORKS

1937 KEY FACT He went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War to continue his journalistic work and to fight with the supporters of the left-wing Loyalist Republican Government against Francisco Franco.

1939–43 He headed the Indian service of the BBC, and contributed regularly to several English newspapers on contemporary political and social issues.

1934

1945

Down and Out in Paris and London

Burmese Days

1938

Homage to Catalonia

Animal Farm

1946

Politics and the English Language

1950 He died from tuberculosis.

1949

Nineteen Eighty-Four p. 383

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

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From Nineteen Eighty-Four DT51 Impossible privacy DT52 Newspeak

Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts the perfect totalitarian state whose aim is the abolition of man and the pursuit of power by the Party as an end in itself. Most of the instruments for controlling the inhabitants of Oceania that the Party created were inspired by the actual reality of the regime of the Communist Soviet Union, in particular by Stalin’s regime, as well as by Hitler’s Nazi rule.

THE PLOT

I Proles, i Proletari, sono al di fuori del sistema del Partito e vivono negli slums.

The world is divided into three blocks, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, which are continuously at war. Winston Smith, the protagonist, lives in totalitarian Oceania under the tyranny of the Party, which controls all aspects of people’s lives through Minluv, Mintrue and Minpax (so-called in Newspeak: Ministries of Love, Truth and Peace in Oldspeak) and the Thought Police. Big Brother’s image is everywhere and can follow anyone anywhere. Winston belongs to the Outer Party; his job is to rewrite history in the Ministry of Truth, bringing it in line with current political thinking and the economic predictions of the Party. Winston is a rebel and hates the Party and its leader, Big Brother. He starts writing a diary and having an affair with Julia, who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth and is a member of the Anti-Sex League. Winston also makes friend with O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, who tells Winston he is actually an enemy of the Party. O’Brien gives Winston the secret Book of the Brotherhood, a terrorist organisation led by Goldenstein, whose aim is to overthrow the Party. Winston makes love to Julia in a room he has rented in the Prole area and reads the secret book to her, but she is not interested. One day they are arrested by the Thought Police in their secret room and taken to the Ministry of Love, where people are tortured to be ‘cured’ of their rebelliousness. O’Brien becomes Winston’s torturer in Room 101. First, O’Brien destroys Winston’s rational and intellectual integrity and finally he destroys his emotional resistance: Winston cannot bear rats and when they are about to bite his face, he cries ‘Do it to Julia!‘ His integrity lost, he is released and as he sits in a bar his eyes are full of tears of joy because now he ‘loves Big Brother‘.

Themes • Totalitarianism In Oceania, one of the three totalitarian powers the world is divided into, the Party – the only Party – bombards its subjects with endless propaganda and monitoring, mostly done through telescreens, devices which can never be turned off and which see all ‘Comrades’, even in their homes. Both propaganda and monitoring are designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The Party also isolates individuals by undermining family structure and suppressing sexual desires, and totally controls information through ‘rectification’ of facts, which is actually endless rewriting and falsification of the past. Doublethinking is how O’Brien, who tortures Winston to ‘cure’ him of his rebelliousness, reaches perfect orthodoxy; the best examples of Doublethinking are the three main slogans of the Party, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, WAR IS PEACE, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The only crime is ‘thought crime’, which consists of thinking something against the orthodoxy of Ingsoc, the official doctrine of the Party. Therefore, the Party considers language a vital instrument of control.

Ideas for your map: REVOLUTION

p. 437

383

AUTHORS AND WORKS Dystopian novel IN ACTION They said of this…

What is totalitarianism? Hannah Arendt (1906–75) was a German historian and political philosopher who dedicated much of her study to understanding the nature of power, evil and totalitarianism. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. (From Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)

• Language: Newspeak A new language, Newspeak, totally invented by the Party, is gradually taking the place of ‘Oldspeak‘ (standard English). The comparison with Orwell’s view of language, which he describes in Politics and the English Language, shows how firmly Orwell believes that Newspeak represents the corruption and death of both language and thought and that language, especially in politics, should be clear and avoid stock phrases, for example slogans, because slogans are ready made, and prevent independent thinking. The slogan ‘Newspeak is Ingsoc, Ingsoc is Newspeak‘ means that by controlling language the Party controls thought. Perfect orthodoxy is achieved in the mind, and disobedience or rebellion are no longer possible, because there are no words to express them. Even the evidence of lived experience can be ignored. Winston himself, ‘the last man (and rebel) on earth‘, is persuaded by endless torture that ‘two and two make five‘. Language constructs the truth, and imposes it on the evidence of reality.

• Love Winston’s loveless life shows how totalitarian regimes destroy families, love and individuals’ lives to make the Party strong. Winston’s love for Julia is therefore an act of political rebellion because the only love allowed is that for Big Brother.

Narrative structure and style Conflict is focused on Winston Smith, the protagonist, and his doomed rebellion against the Party, which is represented by Winston’s hatred for Big Brother, a mysterious leader whose face and voice fill all of Winston’s world. He is Winston’s immaterial enemy. Winston finds a weak temporary ally in Julia, his lover, and in O’Brien, an important member of the Inner Party. When Winston is imprisoned and tortured, O’Brien becomes his antagonist, thus transforming Winston’s ideal opposition to Big Brother into the confrontation between two wills, Winston’s and O’Brien’s. At the end of the novel Winston collapses, repudiates his love for Julia and loves Big Brother. Orwell’s prose is simple and clear, as he believed that language should not manipulate or distort facts, but show them as clearly as possible. His style is realistic but the society he presents is imaginary and the realisation of totalitarianism is a typical example of the dystopian novel ( p. 342). MIND MAP

Nineteen Eighty-Four

▲ Hannah Arendt

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is the essence of totalitarianism according to Arendt? 2 Do you find Arendt’s definition of totalitarianism convincing? If not, what is yours?

perfect totalitarian state

Stalin’s – Hitler’s rule

dystopian novel

the Party

propaganda – slogans

thought crime

Winston Smith – doomed rebellion

Newspeak

simple clear prose

O’Brien – antagonist

language as instrument of control

CHECK OUT 1 Complete the table with the correct information. Models for regime in 1984

384

Features of totalitarianism

The Modern Age – Authors and works

Features of Newspeak

Narrative structure and style

Ideas for your map: TOTALITARIANISM

p. 437

George Orwell

T61 Two and two make five

Nineteen Eighty-Four

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

In the Ministry of Love, Winston is physically tortured and constantly injected with drugs until he confesses all sorts of crimes against the Party. Then it is O’Brien’s turn in Room 101; he connects Winston to an electric dial and sends electric shocks through his body. The pain increases till O’Brien asks Winston one final question.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. sits • reminds • torturing • back and forth • relieve • lying • holds up • wrong • resume • pain • increases • examines • can’t • gratitude O’Brien (1) (2)

Winston of a sentence that the prisoner wrote in his diary and four fingers. O’Brien asks Winston how many fingers he is holding up, and Winston

replies to O’Brien that there are four. Then he says that there are five, but O’Brien tells him that he is

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

(3)

. Each (4)

(5)

, as O’Brien (6)

answer causes more and more excruciating the electricity running through Winston’s body.

After the dial has gone over sixty and more, O’Brien (7) (8)

Winston up and stops

him for a while, then he lays him down again. The doctor (9)

Winston, and O’Brien gives the order to (10)

the torture. He asks Winston how many

fingers he is holding up. Winston says there are four, but when he opens his eyes again he sees a number of fingers moving (11)

, and he (12)

really tell how many there are.

When he tells O’Brien that he doesn’t know how many fingers O’Brien is holding up, his torturers (13)

his pain with an injection, and Winston looks at O’Brien full of (14)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What did Winston write in his diary?

‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston. O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the 5 four fingers extended. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘Four.’ ‘And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’ ‘Four.’ The word ended in a gasp of pain1. The needle2 of the dial had shot up3 to fifty-five. The 10 sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore4 into his lungs and issued again in deep groans5 which even by clenching6 his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever7. This time the pain was only slightly eased8. 15 ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

1 gasp of pain: rantolo di dolore 2 needle: ago 3 shot up: schizzato all’insu 4 tore: penetrò dolorosamente

5 groans: gemiti 6 clenching: serrando 7 drew back the lever: abbassò la leva (diminuendo la scarica elettrica)

8 slightly eased: appena alleggerito (il dolore, così come l’ossessiva ripetizione della stessa domanda, devono essere sempre presenti per minare la resistenza di Winston)

385

AUTHORS AND WORKS Dystopian novel

2 Does O’ Brien’s question change?

3 What is the result of the torture?

‘Four.’ The needle went up to sixty. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’ The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern9 face and the 20 four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars10, enormous, blurry11, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’ 25 ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Five! Five! Five!’ ‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’ ‘Four! Five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’ Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost 30 consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened12. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering13, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung14 to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and 35 that it was O’Brien who would save him from it. ‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently. ‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered15. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’ ‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they 40 are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’ He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip16 of his limbs tightened again, but the pain had ebbed away17 and the trembling had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold. O’Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white coat, who had stood immobile throughout the proceedings. The man in the white coat bent down and looked closely into Winston’s 45 eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against his chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O’Brien. ‘Again,’ said O’Brien. The pain flowed into Winston’s body. The needle must be at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that 50 mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. O’Brien had drawn back the lever. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ 55 ‘Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see five.’ ‘Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?’ ‘Really to see them.’ ‘Again,’ said O’Brien. Perhaps the needle was eighty—ninety. Winston could not intermittently remember why the

9 stern: severa 10 pillars: colonne 11 blurry: sfocate 12 loosened: allentati

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

13 were chattering: battevano senza sosta 14 clung: si aggrappò 15 blubblered: singhiozzò

16 grip: presa 17 had ebbed away: era lentamente svanito

George Orwell

4 What convinces O’Brien that Winston is ‘getting sane’?

pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving 60 in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still 65 streaming18 past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four, five, six—in all honesty I don’t know.’ ‘Better,’ said O’Brien. 70 A needle slid19 into Winston’s arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful, healing warmth20 spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O’Brien. (From Part 3, Chapter 3)

18 streaming: ondeggiando

19 A needle slid: un ago scivolò

20 a blissful... warmth: un delizioso calore ristoratore

▶ George Orwell’s 1984 directed by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan at the Playhouse Theatre in London

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 How many times does O’Brien ask Winston about his raised fingers? Why are there so many repetitions, alternated with electric shocks?

5 What kind of language characterises the extract? Choose from among the following: factual

high

metaphorical

archaic

musical

2 How severe is Winston’s pain under torture? Describe how he feels in your own words. 3 What does O’Brien oppose to Winston’s belief in evidence?

DEBATE

4 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones.

6 Debate this statement in groups.

1 O’Brien tortures Winston because it his duty but feels uncomfortable about his role.

T F

2 The narrator is external, but the focalisation through Winston’s eyes shows the torture from the point of view of the victim.

T F

3 The dominant narrative modes are direct speech, and report; the narrator keeps at a distance from the events he/she narrates because the scene is shocking.

T F

Limitations of a person’s rights are unacceptable under any condition. Group A believe that a person’s right to life and freedom cannot be taken away for any reason. Group B claim that limitations of a person’s rights can be justified in extreme situations.

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AUTHORS AND WORKS LEARNING DIGITAL W ar poets PPT

War poets

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Shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder John McCrae DT53 In Flanders Fields

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War poets The First World War (1914–18) gave the final, definitive blow to the myth of Victorian progress. The suffering of trench war was shown vividly in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), and by the War poets, a number of young officers not just from Great Britain, but also from the members of the Commonwealth, which sent troops to support the motherland in the military effort. They were John McCrae (Canadian, 1872– 1918), Edward Thomas (1878–1917), Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918 p. 392), Wilfred Owen (1893–1918 p. 390), Herbert Read (1893– 1968) and Robert Graves (1895–1985). Most died during the conflict.

Themes

IN ACTION 1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to its definition (a–d). 1

stalemate war

trench warfare

gangrene

cannon fodder

a soldiers seen as expendable in battle b war conducted along fixed fronts with hardly any territorial gain on either part c when human tissue is infected and decomposes d war conducted in trenches dug along the opposing fronts

At first the war was seen as a heroic and noble adventure; a deep sense of patriotic duty encouraged a lot of young idealists to volunteer to demonstrate their valour. As the war dragged on, however, and the young officers confronted the actual reality of modern warfare (stalemate war, trench warfare, death, gas, gangrene, shell shock, and the dehumanisation of soldiers who were cannon fodder for the interests of the Great Powers) they focused on the horror of the war, writing during and from within the conflict itself. It is estimated that throughout the First World War, the Allies used 5,000,000 tons of artillery shells against enemy positions. The Central Powers used a similar amount of shells in their effort to win the war. Soldiers subjected to continual exposure to shellfire were in danger of developing shell shock. Early symptoms included tiredness, irritability, lack of concentration and headaches. Eventually, the men suffered mental breakdowns making it impossible for them to remain on the front-line. Between 1914 and 1918 the British Army identified 80,000 men (2% of those who saw active service) as suffering from shell shock. The War poets went through the same traumatic experiences as private soldiers and started writing poetry inspired by real events as a way of trying to express their extreme emotions on the battlefield. Their combined voices established War poetry as a literary genre.

Style The style is realistic and often crude, for example, when the fatigue of endless marching is described, together with the devastating effects of all this on the soldiers’ psychological and physical health. The details are accurate, and the feelings and states the War poets convey intense and extreme: anger, shock, terror and exhaustion. They generally chose conventional forms and tried to show their mastery in versification and figurative language, though they occasionally adopted freer forms.

MIND MAP

direct experience from WWI

heroic adventure – patriotism

John McCrae – Edward Thomas – Siegfried Sassoon – Rupert Brooke – Isaac Rosenberg – Wilfred Owen – Herbert Read – Robert Graves

CHECK OUT

War poets

horror of war

realistic crude style

conventional forms

shell shock – mental breakdowns

1 Answer the questions.

2 Which two different reactions to the war are to be found in War poetry?

1 Who were the main representatives of War poetry?

3 How original were the War poets stylistically?

388

The Modern Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: WAR

p. 437

ACROSS TIME Voices in war AND SPACE Poets have responded differently to the trauma of war, whether

AGENDA 2030

by objectifying their fears and concerns, or by using poetry as an outlet for deeply disturbing trauma. The Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti published his volume of free verse Il porto sepolto (largely written on the Karst Front) in 1917; Soldati (1918) is one of the shortest poems in world literature; it depicts the death of soldiers in deliberately laconic but deeply melancholy terms. For Amineh Abou Kerech, a young Syrian refugee who left her country to live first in Egypt and then in England, poetry is a way of putting her alienation into words and of giving voice to her pain about her suffering country, tormented by a civil war that broke out in 2011. Her poem Lament for Syria won the United Kingdom’s Betjeman Poetry Prize in 2017. At the prize giving ceremony she read the first part of her poem in English before switching to Arabic at the words ‘I am from Syria.‘

Soldati (1918)

by Giuseppe Ungaretti Si sta come d’autunno sugli alberi le foglie.

T62 Lament for Syria (2017)

by Amineh Abou Kerech

Syrian doves croon above my head their call cries in my eyes. I’m trying to design a country that will go with my poetry 5 and not get in the way when I’m thinking, where soldiers don’t walk over my face. I’m trying to design a country which will be worthy of me if I’m ever a poet and make allowances if I burst into tears. 10 I’m trying to design a City of Love, Peace, Concord and Virtue, free of mess, war, wreckage and misery. Oh Syria, my love I hear your moaning 15 in the cries of the doves. I hear your screaming cry. I left your land and merciful soil And your fragrance of jasmine My wing is broken like your wing.

▲ Scene of war damage from Syrian war.

MEDIATION 1 Answer the questions. 1 Try to translate Ungaretti’s poem into English. 2 Why is death the inevitable destiny of soldiers? 3 What does the speaker wish she could see for her country in Lament for Syria? 4 What do the doves with their moaning remind the speaker of? 5 Amineh Abou Kerech had been learning English only for a year when she wrote her poem. Did you find writing Soldati in English a challenging task?

Ideas for your map: WAR

p. 437

389

Wilfred Owen

AUTHORS AND WORKS

(1893–1918)

War poets

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

DT54 Anthem for Doomed Youth

CHECK OUT

Profile

1 Answer the questions.

At first Owen looked down on soldiers and their fear of the war. However, the many shocking experiences that he went through during the war brought him to a bitterly tragic understanding of the conflict. He fell into a shell hole, suffered concussion, was blown up by a trench mortar, and lay unconscious several days among the remains of one of his fellow officers. His friendship with Siegfried Sassoon contributed to his change of mind. They both decided to bear witness to the horrors of the war they had experienced first-hand.

1 How did Owen first see soldiers fearing war? 2 What traumatic experiences did he live through in the war? 3 Who did he make friends with during the war?

T63 Dulce et Decorum Est

Owen wrote the poem between August 1917 and September 1918 to illustrate the horrifying reality of World War I. He ironically uses the Latin poet Horace’s words (It is sweet and fitting) as a title for his poem, which ends with his address to the readers for them to stop seeing war as an honourable affair.

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. heroic • warning • burnt • suffocated • blood • dreams • march • poison

EMOTIONAL LEARNING The soldiers (1)

towards their camp, regardless of the Germans’ light flares and of the

(2)

gas shells dropping just behind them. Somebody shouts out an urgent

(3)

about the poison gas, but one soldier doesn’t manage to put his mask on in time and

starts being (4)

by the green gas. The speaker endlessly (5)

of the dying

soldier and invites readers to reconsider their view of war. He confronts them with the body of the dying soldier being flung onto a wagon to be carried away, the (6)

jolting in his (7)

lungs. The speaker asks the reader to reconsider his view of death in war as (8)

and patriotic.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed1, coughing like hags2, we cursed through sludge3, Till on the haunting flares4 we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge5. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, 1 Knock-kneed: con le ginocchia che si toccavano 2 hags: vecchie streghe 3 sludge: melma

390

The Modern Age – Authors and works

4 haunting flares: fiammate spaventose (i tedeschi illuminavano i campi di battaglia con fiammate di luce per individuare i bersagli) 5 trudge: arrancare

LIFE 1893 Wilfred Owen was educated in the Evangelical faith, but later abandoned it.

1913 He taught English and French in Bordeaux while writing poetry.

1915 KEY FACT He enlisted in the army and suffered traumatic experiences. He was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh. There he met Siegfried Sassoon, another War poet.

1918 He returned to the front and was killed in action one week before the signing of the Armistice.

But limped on6, blood-shod. All went lame7; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots8 Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

6 limped on: avanzavano zoppicanti 7 lame: zoppi 8 hoots: sibili 9 ecstasy of fumbling: brancolare frenetico 10 clumsy: goffi 11 stumbling: inciampando 12 flound’ring: dimenandosi 13 lime: calce viva (anticamente usata come arma chimica) 14 misty: appannati 15 He… choking: si precipita verso di me, barcollando, soffocando 16 smothering: affannoso 17 pace: marciare 18 we flung him in: in cui lo gettammo 19 writhing: contorcersi 20 jolt: sobbalzo 21 gargling: che arriva come un gargarismo 22 from… lungs: dai polmoni rosi dal gas 23 bitter… sores: amaro come il bolo di spregevoli, incurabili piaghe 24 zest: zelo

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling9 10 Fitting the clumsy10 helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling11 And flound’ring12 like a man in fire or lime13.— Dim through the misty14 panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking15, drowning. If in some smothering16 dreams, you too could pace17 Behind the wagon that we flung him in18, And watch the white eyes writhing19 in his face, 20 His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt20, the blood Come gargling21 from the froth-corrupted lungs22, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores23 on innocent tongues,— 25 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest24 To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. 15

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Why are the soldiers unaware of the ongoing gas attack?

2 Is the speaker an observer of the scene? 3 Is the dying soldier named?

4 Who are the children that desire glory in war?

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which details describe WWI as a meaningless brutal event? 2 Is there any sign of compassion and respect for the dying soldier? Why?/Why not? 3 Why is the soldier not identified with a name? 4 What do the figures of resemblance add to the narration of the march and of the soldier’s death? 5 What is the final message of the poem? DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Dying for your country makes sense Group A claim that dying for your country is honourable. Group B claim that no country is worth the loss of human lives. PDF

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▲ John Singer Sargent, Gassed (1919)

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391

AUTHORS AND WORKS War poets

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)

Profile Rosenberg was keen on the arts even before the war and when he enlisted, he declared its absurdity from the beginning. The pomp and glory and patriotism never convinced him. He sees the absurdity of the conflict very clearly, as presented in Break of Day in the Trenches, where he describes a rat crossing no man’s land, the territory between the two front lines on the Western Front, that soldiers were obliged to cross with no defence against shells, gas attacks, mortars and machine guns whenever an attack was launched. Most of the dead soldiers’ corpses could not be recovered and lay in no man’s land, which was grown over with red poppies. The rat ironically ignores the distinction between enemy lines and represents nature which, unlike human beings, knows nothing of the mechanised warfare and brutal killing men are capable of.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Did Rosenberg ever speak in favour of the war? 2 What is the no man’s land? 3 How does nature see the war and killing in Break of Day in the Trenches?

T64 Break of Day in the Trenches LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

Rosenberg wrote the poem on the Western Front in 1916. It is about dawn in the middle of the battle, with the sudden appearance of a rat.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. crossed • safe • bodies • falling • touches • German • poppy

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

At dawn the speaker, a soldier in the trenches, picks a (1) (2)

and sees a rat that must have

the no man’s land between the English and the German lines. It (3)

his hand, and the speaker comments that it will touch a (4) amongst the (5)

in battle. The speaker comments that the poppy that he has

picked and stuck in his ear is temporarily (7) Now read the poem and check your answers.

The Modern Age – Authors and works

one as well. It crosses again

of dead soldiers, amongst the red poppies that have grown out of the

dead bodies which keep (6)

392

LIFE 1890 Rosenberg was born into a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to Britain.

1905 He started working as an apprentice to an engraver and showed interest in both poetry and visual art.

1914 He went to South Africa searching for a warmer climate for his lung problems.

1915 KEY FACT Back in the UK he enlisted in the army but he never shared the general enthusiasm and patriotism concerning the war.

1918 He was killed on the Western Front while on night guard.

UNDERSTAND

1 crumbles away: si sbriciola 2 haughty: altezzosi 3 sprawled in the bowels: distesi scomposti nelle viscere 4 quaver: tremito 5 aghast: attonito

2 Answer the questions.

The darkness crumbles away1. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet’s poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty2 athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels3 of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver4—what heart aghast5? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins Drop, and are ever dropping; But mine in my ear is safe— Just a little white with the dust.

1 Does the new day bring novelty with it?

2 Who would shoot the rat? 3 Why does the rat have cosmopolitan sympathies?

4 Why does the rat have more chances for life than strong athletic men?

5 What do the iron and flame stand for?

6 How different is the soldier’s poppy growing from those still growing in the fields?

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What does the beginning of a new day mean for the soldier in the trench?

4 What is the significance of the poppies in the poem? Choose all the correct options. hope and life for all

2 Why does the rat grin at what the soldiers are doing?

the blood shed by dead soldiers

3 What does the white dust on the soldier’s poppy mean? Choose all the correct options.

the fragility and beauty of life constantly menaced by death

purity and innocence paleness and death glory and honour

WEB QUEST 4 Search the web for evidence of stalemate war in our time, focusing on the conditions of soldiers. Present the results to the class. PDF

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393

AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist poets LEARNING DIGITAL Thomas Stearns Eliot and The Waste Land PPT

Thomas Stearns Eliot

PDF

Vers libre does not exist

PDF

Four Quartets DT55 Present time of eternal salvation

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965)

Profile

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to its correct definition (a–d). 1

Anglo-Catholicism

pastiche

juxtaposition

verse play

a using different styles and/or imitating a style b the association of different concepts/images to create an emotional response c a play modelled upon the medieval tradition and written in verse d movement underlining the Catholic heritage of the Anglican Communion Across time and space/ Mediation

Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic whose works and opinions radically modified the culture of the 20th century. Ezra Pound first recognised his gift and helped him publish The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in ‘Poetry‘, an avant-garde magazine, in 1915. Prufrock and Other Observations immediately established the young American as a leading poet of the avant-garde and the initiator of the Modernist revolution of the 20th century. Neurotic Prufrock is obsessed with time and doesn’t ‘dare disturb the universe‘. He is tormented by an ‘overwhelming question‘ he cannot answer until he loses himself in reality. This concern with time, man’s identify and place in the universe is a constant in Eliot’s production. The Waste Land, a rather small book of poetry, represented the high point of Eliot’s art in this initial phase of his career. Eliot combined his love for Dante, Baudelaire, Shakespeare, medieval romances, anthropological studies, personal memories, eastern and western philosophy and mysticism, popular beliefs, songs and everyday conversations, all brought together by his tenacious search for meaning in contemporary ‘waste land’. His next major poem, Ash Wednesday, was written after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism had led him to renew his language once again while still pursuing the main concerns that had appeared in The Waste Land: the need for beauty, order and meaning in a deeply confused world. The work that best reflected his search for new language in poetry was Four Quartets, four interlinked meditations about man’s relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. Eliot fused eastern and western religious and cultural traditions, starting from personal intimate roots. As a dramatist, Eliot’s most notable work was Murder in the Cathedral, first performed in Canterbury Cathedral on June 15, 1935, as part of the annual Canterbury Festival. The play was inspired by the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, on December 29, 1170 ( p. 37). The play intended to revive the tradition of sacred medieval drama and fused elements of Greek drama with others from the medieval tradition. In the 1940s and 1950s, Eliot wrote several verse plays – The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk, and The Elder Statesman – which feature upper-middle-class English families, presented in a variety of crises provoked by infidelity and family rivalry which are finally solved in their renewed commitment to Christian values.

Montale and Eliot Like Thomas S. Eliot, the Italian poet Eugenio Montale (1896–1981) in his collection Ossi di seppia (1925) expressed a universal negative situation employing the techniques of the objective correlative and of juxtaposition.

394

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato: era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia, era l’incartocciarsi della foglia riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato. Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio che schiude la divina Indifferenza: era la statua nella sonnolenza del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato.

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2 Answer the questions. 1 What three examples of objective correlatives are there for the sterility of life? 2 What are the three objective correlatives juxtaposed to? 3 Both Eliot and Montale refused to talk about emotions and rather wanted to evoke them. Is Montale’s poem effective in your opinion?

LIFE 1888 Thomas S. Eliot was born into a middle-class New England family who had moved to St Louis, Missouri. His early studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French and German.

1910–11 KEY FACT After Harvard University, he studied at the University of Sorbonne, Paris. He attended Henri Bergson’s lectures and was influenced by French Symbolists.

1911–14 Back at Harvard, he began reading Indian philosophy and studying Sanskrit.

1914 KEY FACT He befriended the American poet Ezra Pound, and married Vivienne HaighWood, a ballet dancer, who suffered from apparent mental instability.

1917–25 KEY FACT He was a clerk for Lloyds Bank in the City of London.

1925 He became the editor of Faber and Faber, the publisher of most of his works.

1920 1917

Prufrock and Other Observations

WORKS

1922 He suffered a nervous breakdown, and took three months off, during which he completed The Waste Land.

1927 KEY FACT He became a British citizen and a member of the Anglican Church. His wife was sent away for long periods to be treated.

1932 Eliot and his wife separated.

1948 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1939

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism

1925

1930

Ash Wednesday

The Family Reunion

1922

1927

1935

1943

The Waste Land p. 396

The Hollow Men The Journey of the Magi

Murder in the Cathedral

1957 He married Valerie Fletcher, his secretary at Faber and Faber.

Four Quartets

1949

The Cocktail Party

Influences on Eliot Eliot wanted a new language for poetry, and drew from his cosmopolitan culture. Through Baudelaire’s poetry, Eliot discovered the poetic possibilities of the squalor, ugliness and sterility of a modern metropolis but it was above all from the works of Jules Laforgue and Tristan Corbière, two French Symbolists, that he learned to draw images from everyday life and to juxtapose the lyrical and the ordinary. Among the poets of the past, his interest focused on the Metaphysical poets ( p. 68); yet it was above all to Dante and his Divine Comedy that he turned as the model of all poetic art.

Language and style

▲ Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis on Narcissus (1937)

Eliot defended the impersonality and objectivity of art against all sentimentalism. His most significant contribution was the theory of the ‘objective correlative’. In the essay Hamlet and his Problems (1920), Eliot claims that ‘The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion‘. The objective correlative intended to renew the language and spirit of poetry. New feelings were expressed through new, striking and sometimes disturbing images which have the force of a sudden revelation. In his earlier works he used allusions, references and quotes in a pastiche style to show both the fragmentary nature of modern culture and to save these remains of a glorious past. The juxtaposition of bits and pieces of dialogues, scholarly ideas, foreign words, formal styles and colloquial language within The Waste Land was a way for Eliot to represent humanity’s damaged psyche and the modern world. In his later works his language became more personal and intimate.

Themes In an early phase of his career, Eliot’s themes were modern man’s alienation from society, his lack of a truly spiritual life, the question of personal identity, the sense that the present is inferior to the past and the problem of faith in modern civilisation, all present in The Waste Land. After he converted to Christianity in 1927, his poetry changed. The later poems focus on his own depth of analysis and are more hopeful in tone. Four Quartets addresses issues of time, experience, mortality and art. Spirituality offers salvation to human limits, and the past lamentation of the ruin of modern culture, typical of The Waste Land, is abandoned. Similarly, the pastiche of the earlier works is replaced by philosophy and logic, and the formal experiments of his early years are put aside in favour of musical, dramatic effects.

Ideas for your map: STERILITY

p. 437

395

MIND MAP

AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist poets

poet – dramatist – literary critic

Modernist revolution

Thomas Stearns Eliot

sacred drama – verse plays

cosmopolitan culture

impersonality – objectivity

search for meaning in today’s ‘waste land’

French Symbolists

objective correlative

conversion to Anglo-Catholicism

Metaphysical poets

pastiche style

need for beauty and meaning

Dante’s Divine Comedy

more personal intimate style

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What were the major influences on Eliot?

3 How different are Eliot’s later works in style and themes?

2 What are the main points of Eliot’s poetry?

4 What was Eliot’s contribution to drama?

The Waste Land (1922) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

The Waste Land as a spiritual journey

PDF

From The Waste Land DT56 If there were water

IN ACTION English in action 1 Match each word (1–4) to the correct definition (a–d). 1

anthropology

taroc

lust

apathy

a strong sexual desire b the study of human societies and cultures and how they develop c total lack of any desire d a deck of 78 cards which are believed to read people’s future 396

The Waste Land, the most important Modernist poem, was first published in magazines and then as a complete work in 1922, thanks to the help of Ezra Pound. After the publication as a single volume, Eliot added some notes, in which he declared his debt to two major studies in anthropology, James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890) and Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance (1920). Frazer explores the ancient myths of vegetation and fertility rites. Every spring, sacrifices were offered to the gods to encourage a good crop. Weston describes how this pattern influenced medieval literature, in particular in connection with the Holy Grail, the cup that Christ used during the Last Supper, and the Fisher King, whose impotence condemns the land to infertility. Both works underline the death-and-resurrection theme, mainly through the figure of the dying-and-resurrected king/god. These rites have disappeared in the modern age and the sense of a fertile time has been lost with them. In the ‘waste land’ all the springs dry up and the whole land becomes sterile, its most evident manifestation being the lack of water.

Structure The poem is divided into five sections: • The Burial of the Dead (ll.1–76), with four main episodes; a meditation on the cycle of the seasons (spring/winter), a vision of the desert, a taroc card reading and a working day in London when commuters are transformed into the modern counterparts of Dante’s souls in Hell. • A Game of Chess (ll.77–172) consists mainly of two scenes; in the first, a young woman voices her sexual frustration, and in the second, women in a pub express the same frustration. The section closes with their ‘goodnights‘, an ironic imitation of Ophelia’s farewell in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. • The Fire Sermon (ll.173–311) opens with the river Thames. In the following seduction scene a young typist, with no emotional involvement, makes love to a young man. Tyresias, the man with a woman’s breasts from Greek mythology, witnesses the squalid scene. The section also contains references to fire, as either lust or a source of spiritual purification.

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Thomas Stearns Eliot • Death by Water (ll.312–321) consists only of one episode: Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor, drowns. His body is dismembered in sacrifice. • What the Thunder Said (ll.322–433) opens with Christ in his agony, followed by the ‘drip/drop song‘ of water in the desert, and framed by Christ’s return in the Emmaus episode. Thunder in the distance on the Gange river utters three words, ‘give‘, ‘sympathise‘, and ‘control‘. The thunder brings no water yet but it voices a positive message.

Themes The crisis of Western civilisation that the poem voices in its fragmentary structure is the loss of desire. Modern men are damned to a life of quiet resignation. They hide their own desires and even resist change. All desires, even the sexual instinct, are corrupted and beauty can be experienced only in brief moments. The condition of spiritual apathy is cured when the speaker asks for water in the desert, and the thunder speaks to him/her. Though there is no water, people are again capable of desiring it.

Language and style The Waste Land is a loosely connected narrative poem whose unity is provided by its underlying themes of sterility and rejection of desire and life. The effect of this poetic collage of various elements is both a reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for the examination of society and humanity. Eliot also imitates the American mode of the spiritual autobiography, in which the writer moves from a dead world to a new life, but in the poem this new life is not yet a regeneration of the self. The poem is written in free verse, with an underlying iambic rhythm, and occasional end rhymes often used ironically. It incorporates high and low materials, and the language is different for each single episode. MIND MAP

anthropology James Frazer, The Golden Bough Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance

The Waste Land

spiritual autobiography

themes

poetic collage

death – resurrection high and low materials

loss of fertility crises of Western civilisation loss of desire – apathy

CHECK OUT 1 Match each sentence (1–7) to its correct half (a–g). 1

Eliot was indebted to two major studies in

a verse, with high and low materials.

Both works underline the

b of various lengths.

In the modern age the sense of a fertile time has

c anthropology for his poem.

The poem is divided into five sections

d been lost.

The fragmentary structure reflects the

e loss of desire in the modern age.

The unity of the poem is provided by the

f death-and-resurrection theme.

The poem is written in free

g themes of sterility and rejection of desire and life.

Ideas for your map: STERILITY

p. 437

397

T65 Much hated April 72

AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist poets

The Waste Land

This is the beginning of the poem. It explores the death-and-resurrection theme through the death of human desire.

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

beauty • carry on • unimportant • water • lacking • force April and spring are cruel as they (1) (2)

life to renew itself, while winter lets life

with little effort. Life struggles to survive in the desert, with no (3)

Once a man was overcome by a girl’s (4) is (5)

, as he saw her with hyacinths in her arms. What

in April (the desire for new life) is present in the ‘hyacinth girl’ for the speaker.

Defining his existence as either life or death is (6)

; what matters is the desire of the beauty

of the ‘hyacinth girl’. Now read the extract and check your answers.

1 breeding: coltiva (Eliot sottolinea con breeding l’intenzionalità percepita come malevola di Aprile di non lasciar tranquilla la terra) 2 Lilacs: lillà 3 stirring: perché stimola/ eccita/muove 4 roots: radici 5 forgetful: immemore 6 feeding: alimentando 7 clutch: si aggrappano 8 Eliot cita Ezechiele 2: ‘Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee‘ (“Figlio dell’uomo, alzati e io parlerò con te”). 9 Eliot cita l’Ecclesiaste 12: ‘and your images shall be broken‘ (“e le vostre immagini (idoli) saranno spezzate”). 10 shelter: rifugio 11 the cricket no relief: il grillo nessun sollievo 12 hyacinths: giacinti (fiori primaverili e un simbolo del dio risorto nei riti della fertilità)

UNDERSTAND

April is the cruellest month, breeding1 Lilacs2 out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring3 Dull roots4 with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful5 snow, feeding6 A little life with dried tubers. […]

2 Answer the questions. 1 What events of springtime are described?

2 What grows in winter, and what protects its growth?

What are the roots that clutch7, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man8, 10 You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images9, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter10, the cricket no relief11, And the dry stone no sound of water. […] ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 15 ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ —Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 20 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. 12

3 What is there in the desert?

4 What is missing in the desert?

5 What does the speaker feel?

(Abridged from The Burial of the Dead)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 In the fertility/vegetation rites of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, people performing certain ritual actions could help the god principle of life in his struggle with the opposing principle of death. Does the speaker in the extract actively contribute to the return of life? 398

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2 All that is to be known and found in the desert is ‘A heap of broken images’. What condition does this objective correlative evoke? Choose all the correct options. fulfilment

accomplishment

perfection

incoherence

chaos

loss of meaning

Thomas Stearns Eliot 3 What does the ‘heap of broken images’ stand for? Choose all the correct options.

April/Winter

a apathy, indifference

the desert

b aridity, dull perseverance of life

the hyacinth girl

c beauty and wonder

t he technique of association and juxtaposition of quotes and references.

the dissolution and exhaustion of modern civilisation.

t he speaker’s consciousness that nothing has remained of the traditions of the past.

4 April/Winter, the desert and the hyacinth girl are three objective correlatives. Match each (1–3) to the emotion/state that they convey (a–c).

5 Is there a regular rhyme scheme? INTERPRET 6 How similar/different are these lines to the opening lines from the General Prologue in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales? ( p. 46)? PDF

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T66 Unreal city, real Hell 73 The Waste Land

In 1918, Eliot was one of the daily commuters into the City, the financial centre of London, while he was working at Lloyds Bank as a clerk. In summer, Eliot walked from the railway station across London Bridge into the City and he used to hear the church of Saint Mary Woolnoth strike nine.

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

damned • grown • foggy • reaches • past • anonymous • warns On a (1) (2)

winter day, the speaker walks across London Bridge in the crowd of London commuters, Dante’s (3)

souls, till he (4)

St Mary Woolnoth, his destination in the City, at 9.00 a.m. There, he recognises a person from his (5)

and asks him if the hope he found has (6)

, and (7)

him to protect it from all dangers. Now read the extract and check your answers.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn1, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many2. 5 Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled3, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet Flowed up4 the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth5 kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine6. 10 There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson7! 1 dawn: alba 2 so many… many: dal Canto III dell’Inferno di Dante: “di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto/che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” (Dante descrive gli Ignavi, coloro che in vita non hanno mai vissuto perché non hanno mai scelto nulla, come una folla

innumerevole che ora, secondo la legge del contrappasso, segue eternamente una insegna) 3 Sighs… exhaled: dal Canto IV dell’Inferno di Dante: “non avea pianto mai che di sospiri” (le anime nel Limbo gemono eternamente perché non hanno mai conosciuto la salvezza)

4 Flowed up: scorrevano su lungo 5 King William Street porta direttamente dal London Bridge alla City, mentre Saint Mary Woolnoth è di fronte all’edificio della Lloyds Bank dove lavorava Eliot. 6 Alle 9.00 inizia la giornata lavorativa nella City, nelle banche e negli uffici.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What damned souls are these in Dante’s Hell? 2 Do the commuters know one another? 3 Where are all these people going?

7 Stetson, nome della famosa marca di cappelli americana fra cui quelli da cowboy, implicitamente definisce lo speaker come americano, pur mantenendone l’anonima impersonalità.

399

AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist poets

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae8! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? 15 “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”9

4 How does the speaker know Stetson?

5 Whose words are these?

(From The Burial of the Dead) 8 La battaglia di Milazzo (260 B.C.) durante la prima Guerra punica, fu la prima battaglia navale fra Roma e Cartagine, conclusasi con la vittoria di Roma

9 verso finale della poesia di Charles Baudeaire Au Lecteur, da Les Fleurs du Mal (“Tu, lettore ipocrita! mio simile – mio fratello!“)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 How does the allusion to Dante’s damned souls, both the Ignavi and the souls in Limbo, transform the commuters’ commuting and working day? Choose the correct option.

4 The extract has some of the characteristics of modern poetry. Choose from among the following. a

It is written in regular stanzas.

The figurative language is new and original.

It is the experience of a new life after death.

The lines are in regular iambic pentameter.

It becomes a quest for salvation.

I t stands for their own spiritual death, whose beginning is the tolling of the church bells at nine.

L ines have different lengths as they adapt to the development of thought/description.

T he figurative language mainly consists of conventional similes and comparisons.

2 The speaker and Stetson share a heroic past: what is their common lot now? 3 How does the speaker show his acceptance of vegetation rites and their natural cycle? 4 In Charles Baudelaire’s opening poem, Au Lecteur, the greatest sin and enemy of all is ennui, a feeling of existential boredom. What new twist do Baudelaire’s words add to the condition of the modern damned?

WEB QUEST 5 Search the web for a picture or painting that may represent the condition of people as Eliot presents it, and compare your choice to a classmate’s. How different are your choices? PDF

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Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

THE PLOT

The play was written for the Canterbury Festival of June 1935, for which Eliot had been asked by the Bishop of Chichester to write something on some episodes of local history. Eliot chose the murder of Thomas à Becket by four knights in Canterbury Cathedral (1170). The murder was the result of his opposition to Henry II when he approved the Constitutions of Clarendon ( p. 21). After a seven-year exile to escape direct confrontation with King Henry II over the monarch’s intention to control the Church, Becket’s return triggered the crisis. Eliot focused on Becket’s inner conflict, on his temptations and even on his doubts about the nature of martyrdom: even martyrdom could be nothing more than the result of man’s pride, his ‘do(ing) the right deed for the wrong reason‘.

In Part I, the Chorus of the women of Canterbury announce the return from a seven-year-exile of their Archbishop, Thomas à Becket. He enters the scene and faces Four Tempters. The First tempter offers to renew his friendship with the King for old times’ sake, the Second urges him to take up his past role as Chancellor and give up the priesthood and the Third suggests he should unite all the barons against the King for the glory of England. Becket resists the temptations quite easily as they represent those he faced before choosing exile. He is surprised by the arrival of the Fourth Tempter, who offers him what he desires most, martyrdom. Becket can resist him, too, accepting that 400

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martyrdom is not the result of man’s choice and will, but of God’s. The interlude consists of Becket’s last sermon about the nature of saintliness to the congregation of Canterbury Cathedral. In Part II, Four Knights arrive at Canterbury Cathedral and threaten the bishop. The priests urge him to run away and then bar the doors of the Cathedral, but he orders them to unbar them. The Knights enter and kill Becket. The Four Knights then address the audience and offer arguments in defence of their decision to murder Becket. The Chorus ends the play celebrating Becket’s martyrdom as a path for a renewal of life.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Characters • Thomas à Becket The archbishop is presented after his return from France and in the moment of his greatest spiritual crisis, when he has to face the temptation of dying a martyr only for his own glory. The fact that he did not expect the fourth Tempter – the one offering him martyrdom – makes his fight to overcome him psychologically convincing. When the knights are about to enter the cathedral he quite calmly faces his murderers and refuses to hide behind barred doors.

• The Four Tempters The first three Tempters offer Becket temptations he has already faced in his life: honour, power, glory, even the desire to fight for England by opposing the king’s will in the alliance with the barons. The arrival of the Fourth Tempter is unexpected and the confrontation between him and Becket is made real by the Tempter’s determination and certainty that he can win Becket’s will.

Themes • Temptation and martyrdom Temptation is represented by the Chorus, who want him to return to France, by the priests urging Becket to save himself, and allegorically by the Four Tempters. Even martyrdom can be a temptation. Becket could choose to die to show his grandeur and courage but after being tempted he accepts martyrdom as designed for him in God’s plan, in the same way Christ did. The Chorus of the women of Canterbury represents humanity itself, ‘small folk who live among small things‘. They represent the fear of involvement and the unwillingness to accept change. Very much against their will and still living in mortal fear, they are made to bear witness, too. They develop from their initial apathy and fear to the final acceptance of individual responsibility towards their lives.

Genre Eliot intended his verse play to be an act of ritual purification and renewal as Greek drama had been, and like the 14th- and 15th-century religious drama, miracle and morality plays ( p. 38). From Greek tragedy, Eliot also borrowed the Chorus, which comments on and responds to the developing drama. The allegorical characters of the Four Tempters representing Becket’s inner conflict are drawn from the tradition of morality plays, where the fight over the soul of man is represented allegorically. The play mixes prose and poetry, mostly free verse with occasional rhymed couplets.

MIND MAP

Murder of Thomas à Becket, Canterbury Cathedral ▲ The place in the Canterbury Cathedral

where Saint Thomas à Becket was murdered.

Murder in the Cathedral

Becket’s inner conflict

Chorus of women

temptation and martyrdom

apathy

verse drama

Four Tempters

miracle and morality plays Greek drama

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why was the play written and what is about?

3 What do the women of Canterbury stand for?

2 What are temptation and martyrdom, and how does Becket face both?

4 What genres did Eliot choose as models for his verse drama?

Ideas for your map: LIFE

p. 437

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Modernist poets LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T67 Living, and partly living 74 Murder in the Cathedral

The Chorus contemplates Becket’s return and their own condition of apathy and ‘partial life’.

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

fears • leave • afraid • change • daily The Chorus of women talk about their lives, (1)

occupations, small pleasures and

(2)

, and the normal cycle of life with its share of joy and pain. They do not want any

(3)

in it but now they feel (4)

about to happen. They invite Becket to (5)

because something new and unknown is them and return to France.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND

We do not wish anything to happen. Seven years we have lived quietly, Succeeded in avoiding notice. Living and partly living. There have been oppression and luxury, There have been poverty and licence. There has been minor injustice. Yet we have gone on living, Living and partly living.

Sometimes the corn has failed us, Sometimes the harvest is good, One year is a year of rain, Another a year of dryness, One year the apples are abundant. 15 Another year the plums are lacking. Yet we have gone on living. Living and partly living.

2 Answer the questions. 1 How long have the women led their quiet lives?

2 What have they tried to do all the time?

We have kept the feasts, heard the masses. We have brewed beer and cider. 20 Gathered wood against the winter. Talked at the corner of the fire. Talked at the corners of streets. Talked not always in whispers. Living and partly living. 25 We have seen births, deaths and marriages. We have had various scandals, We have been afflicted with taxes. 402

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3 Have their lives been happy or unhappy?

Thomas Stearns Eliot We have had laughter and gossip, Several girls have disappeared 30 Unaccountably, and some not able to. We have all had our private terrors. Our particular shadows, our secret fears.

4 Is fear absent from their ordinary lives?

But now a great fear is upon us, a fear not of one but of many, A fear like birth and death, when we see birth and death alone 35 In a void apart. We Are afraid in a fear which we cannot know, which we cannot face, which none understands, And our hearts are torn from us, our brains unskinned like the layers of an onion, our selves are lost lost In a final fear which none understands. […]

5 How happy are they about the return of Becket?

40 O Thomas, Archbishop, leave us, leave us, leave sullen Dover, and set sail for France.

Thomas our Archbishop still our Archbishop even in France. Thomas Archbishop, set the white sail between the grey sky and the bitter sea, leave us, leave us for France.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Do the women see Becket’s return in political or spiritual terms? 2 The women have had pleasures in their lives, too. What feeling(s) do they reveal as they describe these pleasures? Choose from among the following. intense joy utter boredom mere contentedness 3 Like their pleasures, the women’s social lives are the objective correlative for their feelings and moods. Which are present here? intense joy utter boredom mere contentedness 4 How does the refrain summarise the women’s present spiritual lives? 5 Anaphora and parallelisms are dominant in the extract. To what effect? Choose all the correct options. a

to make the women’s monologue memorable

to enhance the choral identity of the women speaking in unison

to compensate for the absence of identity in the women INTERPRET

4 The Chorus prefers a life of mere spiritual survival and they cling to it. Is their attitude profoundly human, or inhuman in your view? Why?

▲ Poster of the film Becket, inspired by the life and death of Saint Thomas à Becket (1964)

PDF

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403

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-Modernist poets LEARNING DIGITAL

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973)

Wystan Hugh Auden and Musées des Beaux Arts From Another Time DT57 The Unknown Citizen

PDF

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

In his poems Auden interpreted the changing aspects of European culture in the restless period that led up to World War II. He labelled the 1930s ‘the age of anxiety’ to indicate their disturbing uneasiness with totalitarianism growing in Germany and the imminent risk of a new war. Thomas S. Eliot ( p. 394) was a major influence on Auden’s poetry, together with Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owen ( p. 390). In the 1930s his poems mirrored his travels as well as his interest in Karl Marx’s philosophy, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Bertold Brecht’s drama.

1 Match each word (1–3) to the correct definition (a–c). 1

Existentialism

Blues

epigram

a melancholic sub-genre of jazz music, with refrains and repetitions b a witty short poem c philosophical theory whose centre is the responsibility of the individual towards their lives

Themes In the earlier phase of his production, Auden dealt with the economic, social and political issues of the time, such as unemployment, colonialism, the Civil War in Spain, the rise of Nazism, racial apartheid, violence and the respect of human and civil rights. September 1, 1939 was written on the day of the invasion of Poland (the day which marked the outbreak of World War II), while Refugee Blues was dedicated to all the Jews deprived of their rights and persecuted by Hitler in the midst of general indifference. Later, Auden became disillusioned with Marxism and looked for different answers to his questions about society and mankind in Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55), a Danish philosopher who was a major influence in the development of 20th-century Existentialism. Auden became interested in religious and spiritual influences and a search for analytical clarity, order, and universal patterns of human existence. One of his most popular poems is Funeral Blues, also known as Stop all the clocks (1938), which illustrates a funeral scenario where the speaker expresses his sadness over the loss of a loved one.

▲ A scene from the film Four Weddings and

a Funeral (1994) where actor John Hannah reads the poem Funeral Blues by Auden on the occasion of his friend and lover’s funeral.

Style His poetry is considered versatile and inventive, ranging from epigrams to book-length verse, and incorporating a vast range of scientific knowledge. Auden alternates between different poetic forms, from light ballad verse to American black jazz rhythms. He combines great technical sophistication with a return to popular sources, echoing nursery rhymes and using material from Norse sagas due to his fascination with Iceland, its myths and its northern glaciers. His poems often have a personal tone but as he speaks through a dramatis persona, they do not imply the direct self-expression of the poet.

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LIFE 1907 KEY FACT Wystan H. Auden was born and grew up near Birmingham. He went to Oxford University, where he formed lifelong friendships with Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood, the Oxford Group members.

1928–29 He was in Berlin when the threat of Nazism was already rising.

1935 He married Erika Mann, a marriage of convenience to enable her to gain British citizenship and escape Nazi Germany, and him to hide his homosexual orientation.

1939 KEY FACT He moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman.

WORKS

1946 He became an American citizen in 1946.

1948 KEY FACT He won the Pulitzer Prize with the collection The Age of Anxiety.

1940

Another Time (including Musée des Beaux Arts and Refugee Blues) p. 406

1944

1947

For the Time Being

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

1955

The Shield of Achilles

▶ Theatre representation

based on Auden’s poetic collection The Age of Anxiety

MIND MAP

‘age of anxiety’

Wystan Hugh Auden

early influences: Marx – Freud – Brecht

later influence: Søren Kierkegaard

economic-politicalsocial issues

religious and spiritual influences

different poetic forms

dramatis persona

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Why did Auden label the 1930s the ‘age of anxiety’? 2 What were the main influences on his works? 3 How different are the themes of his works from the earlier to the later phases? 4 What characterises his style?

Ideas for your map: INDIFFERENCE

p. 437

405

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-Modernist poets LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

T68 Refugee Blues (1939) 75 Another Time

The Final Solution, Hitler’s name for the Holocaust, took place during World War II, most intensively in 1941–42, but the troubles of the German Jews began much earlier. The Nazis saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and the disabled as a serious biological threat to the purity of the ‘German (Aryan) Race’. The Nuremberg laws of 1935 defined Jews not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation (being a Jew) of their grandparents ( p. 337). By the end of the 1930s, when the situation of the Jews in Germany had deteriorated, many of them were trying to emigrate abroad. At first, they were received kindly but, as the war approached, in many countries they were increasingly regarded with hostility and suspicion. In Refugee Blues, written in New York in March 1939, the narrator, probably a German Jew, tells a person with him that there is no place for the Jews anywhere.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. city • committee • fears • dreams • non-valid • persecution • asylum

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The speaker talks about a very large (1) country and can’t find (2) (3)

but with no room for them. They have lost their in the city because the consuls reject their passports as

and the (4)

sends them away. Everything that belongs to nature

continues to be free even under the threat of Hitler’s (5) country nor protection. The speaker (6)

but the Jews have neither of a huge building with thousands of rooms,

but with no room for the German Jews. He (7)

that they will be killed by Hitler and his

soldiers. Now read the poem and check your answers.

2 Answer the questions.

Say1 this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes2: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair, Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there: We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

1 Does the Jews’ country still exist?

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew3, Every spring it blossoms anew: Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table4 and said, “If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”: 12 But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive. Went to a committee; they offered me a chair; Asked me politely to return next year: 15 But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

1 Say: Supponiamo 2 mansions/holes: ville lussuose/buchi

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

3 yew: tasso 4 banged the table: batté un pugno sul tavolo

UNDERSTAND

2 What is wrong with their old passports?

Wystan Hugh Auden Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said; “If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”: 18 He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

3 What does the speaker fear if the Jews are let in?

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling5 in the sky; It was Hitler over Europe, saying, “They must die”: 21 O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

4 Who is the only person interested in the Jews?

Saw a poodle6 in a jacket fastened with a pin, Saw a door opened and a cat let in: 24 But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews. Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay7, Saw the fish swimming as if they were free: 27 Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away. Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees; They had no politicians and sang at their ease: 30 They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

5 What places do the German Jews go to?

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors, A thousand windows and a thousand doors: 33 Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours. Stood on a great plain in the falling snow; Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro: 36 Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me. 5 Thought…rumbling: Credetti di sentire il tuono rombare

6 poodle: barboncino 7 harbour/quay: porto/molo

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Neither the city nor the consul or committee are clearly identified. Why? 2 There are two kinds of anti-Semitism in the poem, both equally unfair and terribly dangerous for Jews. What are they, and why are they dangerous for the Jews? 3 The speaker’s mood is bleak and mournful. Why? 4 What is the effect of the refrain at the end of each stanza? DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Everyone fleeing persecution or serious harm in their country should be offered asylum. Group A claim that the right to asylum should not be conditioned in any way. Group B claim that the right to asylum can only be given in extreme situations. ▲ Jewish refugees boarding a ship to the United States of America PDF

Your text explained

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407

THE USA LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Voices of America PPT The Modern Age:

History and Culture in the USA PDF • Imagism, the first poetic revolution

of the 20th century (Ezra Pound – William Carlos Williams) • New York, the city of lights and illusions (Edith Wharton – Truman Capote) PDF Edgar Lee Master Spoon River Anthology DT58 George Gray

Voices of America In the first half of the 20th century, American poetry followed various lines of development. American Modernist poets, such as the expatriates Ezra Pound and Thomas Stearns Eliot ( p. 394), found their alternatives to a culture torn apart by the traumas of war and the changes of a mechanised world in classicism and the avant-garde movements. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance, instead, took their themes from African primitivism and the life of the urban ‘New Negro’, while the Regionalist artists found their models and visions of integrated cultures in American provincial reality. In prose, the writers of the Lost Generation, who came from the devastating experience of World War I, showed the America of glamour and sadness of the Twenties first, and then of the Great Depression, but ignored the technical revolutions of the stream-of-consciousness novel.

Modernist poetry Experimentation and exchange with Europe characterised the first two decades of the century thanks to Ezra Pound (1885–1972). He contributed many reviews and critical articles to various literary magazines and was associated with Imagism and Vorticism ( p. 349). A typical Imagist poem consists of one image and it is concrete and short, for example In a Station of the Metro by Erza Pound, where he describes a crowd of people in a Paris underground station:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Other Modernist poets associated with Imagism, but often moving away from it into different directions, were Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), e.e. cummings (1894–1962) with his original syntax and punctuation, and William Carlos Williams (1883–1963). His Spring and All was published in 1922. It revealed his choice that the improvement of modern life would come from his American roots, as he showed in Paterson, an epic poem published in five volumes, from 1946 to 1958.

Harlem Renaissance Between the 1920s and 1930s Harlem in New York became the centre of much Black art, giving rise to the Harlem Renaissance. It started with the most influential form, jazz, performed by musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Black poetry was dominated by the writers’ pride in the recognition of their being black and having a distinct culture. Langston Hughes (1901–67 p. 432) was the leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He experimented with free verse, adapting the rhythms of Afro-American music and jazz to poetry. The themes of his poems are connected with issues of race and racism: the persecution and discrimination suffered by black people in the US; the need for a radical reform of the laws and attitudes of white Americans; a manifest wish for integration between Blacks and Whites, each, however, preserving their own individuality, and emphasis on black pride, summed up in the sentence ‘Black is beautiful‘.

Regionalist poetry

▲ Duke Ellington with his band

408

American Regional literature, which includes the South, the Midwest and the Southwest, reached its peak following World War I. Regionalist poetry was a response to the emerging urban, mass-culture of the time. The artists believed globalisation and standardisation were creating a dangerously homogenous culture, and fidelity to ‘local customs’ and ordinary rural lives could be the last defence of cultural individuality. One of the most significant works of Regionalist poetry was Spoon River Anthology published in 1915 by Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950). The volume is a series of epitaphs, written in free verse, in the form of monologues spoken from the grave by former inhabitants of Spoon River, an imaginary town in the Midwest.

The Modern Age – Voices of America

The American novelists of the Modern Age

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Search the web to find out the most important avant-garde magazines founded in the UK and the US in the 1910s. Which is still published today? They said of this…

The Lost Generation There are various stories about who used the expression ‘Lost Generation’ first. Gertrude Stein, the artist who held the salon where Modernist and avant-garde artists met, reported in her autobiography that it was a hotel keeper who first used it: He [the hotel keeper] said that every man becomes civilized between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. If he does not go through a civilizing experience at that time in his life he will not be a civilized man. And the men who went to the war at eighteen missed the period of civilizing, and they could never be civilized. They were a lost generation. Naturally if they are at war they do not have the influences of women, of parents and of preparation. (From Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography, 1937)

▲ Gertrude Stein

2 Answer the questions. 1 What years are fundamental for a man’s growth? Why? 2 What did the men that went to WWI miss? 3 What does the expression Lost Generation mean in your opinion?

MIND MAP

Modernist poetry

Harlem Renaissance

experimentation – exchange with Europe

jazz

Imagism – Vorticism

black poetry – pride

Ezra Pound – William Carlos Williams

Langston Hughes

The American novelists of the first half of the 20th century chose the realistic narrative form with the conventions of economic and sexual themes, avoiding the revelation of the inner world of a character through the stream-of-consciousness novel. The novelists of the Lost Generation were a group of young American writers disillusioned with the materialism and provincialism of America, and deeply conscious of the void created by WWI. They burnt all bridges with the pre-war world of tradition, social stability and established ethical and cultural values. The most representative novelists in the group were Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940 p. 410) and Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961 p. 422), who were both active in Paris. Hemingway, who had little money to spare on books, was fortunate to discover an English-language bookshop with a rental library attached. This was Shakespeare and Company, and its generous owner, Sylvia Beach, allowed Hemingway to borrow as many volumes as he wished and published Joyce’s Ulysses when all editors had rejected it. A writer who dealt with the life and problems of the Deep South was William Faulkner (1897–1962 p. 416). A Regionalist novelist, he set most of his work in ‘Yoknapatawpha County’, an invented Mississippi community which is the setting for his studies of the decline of the South. His novels experiment with narrative techniques such as multiple narrators, a nonlinear time scheme, and interior monologue. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. The writer of the Great Depression was John Steinbeck (1902– 68 p. 426) whose work is dominated by his social conscience. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) dealt with the lives of farmers, labourers and social outcasts in the Western United States in the 1930s. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

Voices of America

Regionalist poetry

response to urban mass culture Edgar Lee Masters

Novelists of the Modern Age

realistic narration

Lost Generation

Southern Gothic

Great Depression

William Faulkner

John Steinbeck

F.S. Fitzgerald – Ernest Hemingway Paris – Sylvia Beach

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

4 Why did Regionalist writers focus on regional culture?

1 What was Ezra Pound’s role in Modernism?

5 Who were the writers of the Lost Generation?

2 Who were the Imagist poets?

6 Which aspects of American society were depicted by Faulkner and Steinbeck?

3 Who was the most significant representative of the Harlem Renaissance?

Ideas for your map: EXPERIMENTATION

p. 437

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THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel LEARNING DIGITAL Francis Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

PPT Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Profile Fitzgerald belonged to the ‘Lost Generation’ of the ‘Golden Age’. His novels and short stories show the Jazz Age of the Roaring Twenties and also some autobiographical aspects, such as the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle and his love affair. Gatsby, the protagonist of The Great Gatsby, amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing fabulous parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy, the woman he is in love with. This reflects the writer’s desperate attempt to please Zelda, who had agreed to marry him only when he had made enough money, and so grant her the life of parties and luxuries she desired. IN ACTION

Themes and style

They said of this…

Fitzgerald presented a real portrait of the spirit of his age – its superficiality, appetites and illusions, its optimism and its inevitable tragic end. He showed the contradiction between the desire for wealth and success connected to the American Dream (the belief that each person could succeed in life owing to his or her capacity, intelligence and effort) and its corruption in the Roaring Twenties. Its substance and moral basis were degraded by the squalid pursuit of power and wealth. Solitude and alienation were hidden under the violent, magnificent surface. A note of deep sadness and melancholy runs through his work, for example, in the short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the incredible story of a child born old and returning to infancy as time passes. Fitzgerald frequently makes use of a first-person narrator who arranges the events and comments on them. His heroes – handsome, confident and doomed – live brilliantly before collapsing, and his heroines are typically beautiful and complex.

The American Dream The American Dream has meant and means a lot of different things to many different people. ‘To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.’ (Maya Lin, American sculptor, author of numerous memorials and buildings)

‘The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.’ (From the American writer David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011)

1 Answer the questions. 1 Who has a positive view of the American Dream, Maya Lin or David Forster Wallace? 2 Which view reflects Gatsby’s American Dream? 3 Is the American Dream still a valid concept today in your opinion? Why?/Why not?

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LIFE 1896 Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota and studied at Princeton.

1914 He left university without graduating to enlist in the US Army during World War I.

1917 KEY FACT He fell in love with a 17-yearold beauty, Zelda Sayre.

1920

WORKS

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

PDF

From The Great Gatsby DT59 When love changes

1920 1922–29 Scott married They lived between the US, Paris, where the Zelda in New Fitzgeralds made friends with Hemingway, and York and the French Riviera. they led a glamorous life 1922 full of parties • The Beautiful and and alcohol. This Side of Paradise

Damned • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button • Tales of the Jazz Age

1925

The Great Gatsby p. 411

1930 KEY FACT Zelda started suffering from nervous breakdowns and was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia. 1934

1937 He started writing screenplays for Hollywood films and became a heavy drinker.

Tender is the Night

1940 He died prematurely of a heart attack.

1941

The Last Tycoon (posthumous)

The Great Gatsby (1925) The novel is set in the New York area, mainly in Long Island, in the two areas of East Egg, the home of families of old and secure wealth and aristocratic habits, and West Egg, which hosts the nouveaux riches like Jay Gatsby himself, the protagonist of the novel.

THE PLOT The novel is narrated in retrospective by Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker from the Midwest who becomes the neighbour of a mysterious man, who has rented a magnificent mansion in Long Island and gives fabulous wild parties. However, Jay Gatsby never joins his own parties and Nick finds out that his real intention in organising them is to meet Daisy, the woman Gatsby fell in love with five years before and who is now married to Tom Buchanan. Thanks to Nick, who is Daisy’s cousin, Daisy and Jay meet and start having an affair. One day, Daisy and Tom have

a fight and as she drives to Gatsby’s house she runs over Tom’s mistress, Myrtle. Gatsby lets everybody believe he was driving the car to protect Daisy, but she deserts him and goes back to her husband Tom. Myrtle’s husband kills Gatsby in revenge. At Gatsby’s funeral, none of his friends or guests at his parties turn up, only Jay’s father and Nick, who turns away in disgust from lives founded on amoral passions and self-assertion to go back to the simpler life of the Midwest, based on more well-grounded principles.

Themes • The shattered American Dream Gatsby is an enigmatic ‘self-made man’ who has achieved the American Dream of immense wealth. However, at the heart of this glamorous world is inner solitude, spiritual emptiness and Gatsby’s hopeless love for Daisy, who is unhappily married to Tom Buchanan, a brutal and tyrannical representative of the older wealthy families, ‘old money’.

• Frustration and delusion The love stories narrated in the novel are full of frustration and delusion. Gatsby pursues an ideal of absolute eternal fidelity in love, which is shattered by the final desertion of the woman he loves, Daisy. She is married to a man who is unfaithful to her and has no problem admitting it. Her marriage has made her cynical and sad and though she briefly restarts her affair with Gatsby, in the end she chooses to stay with Tom. She cannot bear to lose the social status that her marriage gives her.

• Emotional sterility The characters represent the emotional sterility of the high society they belong to. The rich characters’ negative qualities are put on display: wastefulness, hedonism, and carelessness. The novel also suggests that wealth does not guarantee entrance into the upper levels of elite society. Gatsby, self-conscious about his ‘new money’ social status, throws unbelievably glamorous parties in the hope of catching Daisy Buchanan’s attention.

Style The style of The Great Gatsby is sophisticated and elegiac and creates a sense of nostalgia and loss. Metaphoric descriptions are contrasted with the vernacular speech of many of the lower-class characters, and with the satirical observations of Nick, the narrator, describing Gatsby’s parties and Long Island society. 411

AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel

MIND MAP

Lost Generation – Roaring Twenties

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

solitude – alienation

sadness – melancholy – frustration

portrait of the spirit of the age

The Great Gatsby

first-person narrator shattered American dream sophisticated elegiac style

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which aspects of his time and of his own life does Fitzgerald present in his works? 2 How has the American Dream changed? 3 Which themes are there in The Great Gatsby? 4 What are the main features of Fitzgerald’s style? ▲ Jazz-Age Flapper, ‘Vogue’ Magazine (c. 1927)

T69 Gatsby’s funeral 76 The Great Gatsby

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

While arranging for Gatsby’s funeral, Nick tried to call Daisy, only to learn that she and her husband have left suddenly without leaving a date for their return. Only Nick and Jay’s father, Henry C. Gatz, from Minnesota, who read the news of his son’s death in a newspaper published in Chicago, attend the funeral. One more person arrives when they are in the cemetery.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. footsteps • cemetery • latecomer • solitary • raining • attend

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Nick and Gatsby’s father are waiting for people to (1)

Gatsby’s funeral, but nobody

arrives. The procession of three cars arrives at the (2)

. It is (3)

and

the few participants, Nick, Gatsby’s’ father, the minister, some servants and the postman, are all wet. Nick hears the sound of (4)

behind him and turns to see a man he talked to once

in Gatsby’s library; the owl-eyed (5) (6)

joins the ceremony and comments on Gatsby’s

funeral.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

◀ Scene from the 2013 film adaptation

of the novel showing Gatsby and Daisy

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Ideas for your map: AMERICAN DREAM

p. 437

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What time did the Lutheran minister arrive? 2 Why did Nick often look out of the window? 3 How does Gatsby’s father feel? 4 What did Nick ask the minister? Why? 5 What colour is the hearse?

6 What does Nick think about?

7 What does the latecomer feel for Gatsby?

A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father1. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink2 anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. 5 Nobody came. About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle3 beside the gate — first a motor hearse4, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the 10 cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of some one splashing after us over the soggy ground5. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses6 whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months before. I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name.The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled7 from 15 Gatsby’s grave. I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly8 I heard some one murmur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice. We straggled down9 quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate. 20 “I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked. “Neither could anybody else.” “Go on10!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.” He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in. “The poor son-of-a-bitch11,” he said. 25 (Abridged from Chapter 9) 1 Henry C. Gatz, il padre di Gatsby, rivela a Nick il vero nome di suo figlio, James Gatz. Nick non osa confessare nulla dei mezzi illeciti con cui Gatsby si era arricchito a questo uomo onesto del Midwest. 2 to blink: a sbattere 3 in a thick drizzle: in una pioggerella fitta

4 motor hearse: carro funebre 5 splashing... ground: che ci seguiva sguazzando nel terriccio fradicio 6 the man...glasses: l’uomo dagli occhiali da gufo 7 to see... unrolled: per veder togliere il telone protettivo 8 Dimly: Fievolmente

9 straggled down: uscimmo alla spicciolata, disordinatamente 10 Go on!: (qui) Pare impossibile! Ma scherza! 11 The poor son-of-a-bitch: Povero bastardo

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What atmosphere is created by the pouring rain and the hearse? 2 What are Nick’s feelings concerning Gatsby and his solitary end? What about Mr Gatz’s feelings about his son’s funeral? 3 What is the function of the owl-eyed man at the funeral? Choose from the following. a

to highlight the indifference that surrounds Gatsby’s death

to offer consolation to Gatsby’s father

INTERPRET 4 The end of the novel offers no consolation to the reader. Gatsby failed to win Daisy’s love, failed to be accepted into the world of ‘old money’, maybe failed to find real happiness. Do you think that his failure is the result of his personal weaknesses or of the cruelty and indifference of other people? PDF

Your text explained

▲ A scene from the 2013 film adaptation with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, directed by Buz Luhrmann

Digital resources, Study Booster

413

StoryTelling Love (in all shapes and forms) is better than no love at all • Mr Jay Gatsby is reported dead in all the most important newspapers of New York City, Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C.

Jay Gatsby, the eccentric millionaire known for his fabulous parties and his mysterious past, was shot to death in the swimming pool of his wonderful mansion in Long Island, New York. His body was found floating in the swimming pool by Nick Carraway, a neighbor and friend of Gatsby’s, who had visited the millionaire in the early morning. Mr Carraway looked distressed and refused to talk to the journalists about both his tragic finding and the rumours surrounding Gatsby’s life and death. Mr Carraway only admitted having befriended Mr Gatsby quite recently, and having been invited to the millionaire’s parties quite regularly though his own means are very modest in comparison with the wealth of both the aristocratic families of East Egg and the nouveaux riches of West Egg, all regular visitors of Mr Gatsby’s fabulous parties. The body of Mr George Wilson, who most likely shot himself to death, was also found next to Gatsby’s. The circumstances of the alleged murder and suicide are being investigated, but the police believe that Mr Wilson may have sneaked into Gatsby’s property to revenge the death of his wife, Mrs Myrtle Wilson. The woman died in a car accident caused by her own erratic behaviour; she seems to have gotten out of her apartment in a state of confusion only to run out in front of a car. Mr Gatsby admitted being at the wheel, and took full responsibility for the tragic event, though it had been rumoured that a woman was driving the car involved in the tragic accident. Mr Daisy Buchanan, who is rumoured to have been Mr Gatsby’s lover recently and also in the past, has left New York City with her husband Tom without making any statement. Mr Carraway, who happens to be Daisy’s cousin, has no idea of her whereabouts, though he said that he hopes to see her soon. Mr Gatsby seems to have had no family connections, but given his fortune it is expected that a relative will soon turn up to claim the inheritance, which appears to be quite remarkable, though the victim was often rumoured to have accumulated a great fortune in recent times by illegal means. The funeral service will be held as soon as the police authorise it, and Mr Carraway, the only person close to the victim at the moment, has announced that the funeral service will be leaving from Gatsby’s house to reach the local cemetery. He has invited any and all family members and relatives to contact him by telegram or any other means available so that they may help to arrange the funeral and take care of Mr Gatsby’s inheritance.

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DIGITAL STORYTELLING • Divide into three groups, and choose one of the impossible situations. Once you have written the interview/conversation, make a video of it. You can either act it out or record it, using images from the Internet (film adaptations, paintings, real photos, etc.) as a backdrop for your audio recording. Group 1: I loved both, didn’t I? But I loved him the most… Imagine you are Daisy, Gatsby’s lover. You have reluctantly agreed to talk about your affair with Gatsby with a journalist, provided you can stay anonymous. You open your heart and reveal your feelings for Gatsby, and also explain why you decided to stay with your husband Tom though you know that he has betrayed you many times. Write the imaginary interview with Daisy, and make a video. Group 2: You love me, don’t you? I won’t lose you. Imagine you are Gatsby moments before you are assassinated. You are in the swimming pool and thinking of Daisy, the only woman that you have ever loved. You can’t believe that she has ever loved Tom, her husband. You want to call her on the phone in the morning and tell her once again what you feel for her. Write the impossible conversation between Gatsby and Daisy, and make a video. Group 3: I loved my son, I did… but I lost him. Imagine you are Henry C. Gatz, Gatsby’s father. You read the article about his death in a newspaper in Chicago and from the description and picture you understand that this millionaire may be your beloved son, Jay Gatz, from whom you haven’t heard since he left your modest home when he was 16. You are shocked and write a telegram to Nick Carraway to announce your arrival after asking a friend to take care of your house and dog in your absence. Write your imaginary conversation with your friend, who knows how much you cared for your son and how his disappearance broke your heart, and make a video.

AI ACTIVITY

415

THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS Southern Gothic fiction LEARNING DIGITAL

William Faulkner (1897–1962)

W illiam Faulkner and Light in August PDF Light in August: full plot

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Faulkner first became popular abroad, especially in France, where his works were models for the development of the ‘nouveau roman’, and acquired international recognition after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was deeply interested in Freudian ideas and James Joyce’s experimentation with form and structure in exploring the consciousness. His novels describe the decline of the old Southern aristocracy. Starting with Sartoris in 1929, he initiated the saga of the Compson and Sartoris families in Yoknapatawpha County. In The Sound and the Fury, his first major novel, he combined a Yoknapatawpha setting with radical, technical experimentation. In As I Lay Dying, multiple narrators present the ‘poor white’ Bundren family’s journey to Jefferson to bury their matriarch. Absalom, Absalom! presents the tragic destiny of Charles Bon and Judith Sutpen, who are half-brother and sister but also in love. Henry, Judith’s brother, kills his half-brother Bon because he can’t accept the revelation that Bon is mixed race. After this novel, Faulkner returned to the Yoknapatawpha County material he had first created in the 1920s. Racial issues were again confronted. He was deeply sympathetic to the black communities and their condition in the Southern states, and felt that the right way to deal with the issue was through the people of the South themselves.

1 Match each expression (1–3) to the correct definition (a–c). 1

nouveau roman

mixed race

social more

a a person having ancestors from two or more races b a socially constructed idea that defines the right moral behaviour c an experimental form popular in 1950s, France focusing on individual experiences

Light in August (1932) Light in August is set in the American South in the 1930s, during Prohibition and in the context of the Jim Crow Laws legalising racial segregation in the South. The novel centres mainly on the life of Joe Christmas, an illegitimate orphan who is suspected of being of mixed racial origin. His tragic, violent life story is told mostly in flashbacks in the context of a larger story that involves many characters in Jefferson, Mississippi.

Characters • Joe Christmas Joe is an enigmatic man without a history, carrying the weight of past violence, abuse and neglect. An orphan uncertain of his racial heritage, he wanders from place to place in a futile search for somewhere he can belong. An angry man, he is an inscrutable figure, closed and elusive, with a need to inflict harm on others and even to go so far as to kill. His moral nature is dark and he emerges as a conflicted modern antihero, the classic Faulkner tragic figure doomed to fight and fail.

• Lena Grove Lena is a teenager who represents the novel’s life force. She is determined to find and marry Lucas Burch, the father of her baby, to make him legitimate, and she is the only one to bring life to Jefferson. After Joe’s death, when Lucas Burch disappears, she again sets out to find him with the help of Byron Bunch. 416

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1897 William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi.

1902 KEY FACT His family moved to Oxford, Mississippi. He spent most of his life there. He never completed high school.

WORKS

1918 He enlisted in the Canadian air force, but neither fought in combat nor flew a plane.

1932 He started writing film scripts for Hollywood to make a living for himself and his wife and children.

1925

1932

Soldier’s Pay

1929

• Sartoris •T he Sound and the Fury

1930

As I Lay Dying

Light in August p. 416

1935 His brother Dean died flying Faulkner’s own Waco cabin aircraft.

1936

Absalom, Absalom!

1950 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1939

1957 He was appointed writerin-residence at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and bought a house there.

1962 He died of a heart attack, probably connected to his heavy drinking in his last years.

Wild Palms

• Byron Bunch He is a good, honest man, but made dull by years of routine and hard work. He lives in a detached world and avoids personal connections with people as much as possible to avoid pain and sadness until Lena arrives in Jefferson. In the end, he takes risks and learns to explore his own feelings, and to love and take care of someone.

• Joe Brown (a.k.a. Lucas Burch) The father of Lena’s baby, he is a gambler, bootlegger (someone making or selling alcohol illegally) and conman. He is a known liar for those who can see through his smiles.

• Joanna Burden

▲ Edward Hopper, Gas (1940).

Joanna Burden is a lifelong resident of Jefferson. Her family is known for their commitment to abolition and black equality, and she is personally supportive of several black colleges in the South. She is rumoured to have sexual relations with black men, and in the eyes of the people of Jefferson she is, and will remain, a Northerner, even though her family relocated to the South after Reconstruction.

THE PLOT Lena Grove gets pregnant by Lucas Burch, who leaves her promising to return. When she has no news from him, she walks from Alabama to Jefferson, Mississippi, to find him. On entering the town, she sees a house on fire, and while talking to Byron Bunch, a worker at the mill, she learns that Joe Christmas and Joe Brown — two vagabonds who stopped working at the mill around the same time and are rumoured to be bootlegging whiskey — live in a cabin on the same property. Some flashbacks reveal Joe Christmas’ past: he was abandoned in a white orphanage, where he was beaten and picked on because he was biracial. Even the man that adopted him, McEachern, saw him as a sinner. At seventeen, Joe started an affair with a young girl, Bobbie, but his adoptive father found out what he was doing; after being beaten almost to death by a group of white men, Joe wandered between Chicago, Detroit and Mexico for fifteen years, finally heading into Mississippi. He was about thirty when he broke into the Burden house to steal food and met Joanna. They started a long, tumultuous affair. One day, Joanna is found dead with her throat cut and it appears that the fire was set to cover up the murder. Both Joe Christmas

and Joe Brown are initially suspected of murdering her, though Joe Christmas is the one later formally accused of the crime. Lena understands that Joe Brown is Lucas Burch under a fake name. Joe Christmas escapes but is eventually caught in the nearby town of Mottstown. Mr Hines, a local man, is discovered to be Joe’s grandfather. The Hines’ daughter, Milly, had sex with a black man from a traveling circus and got pregnant. Hines killed the man, and Milly died giving birth to Joe. Mr Hines hated the baby because he was biracial and took him to a white orphanage. The Hines go to Jefferson and meet Gail Hightower, a preacher who lives isolated from the community after the mysterious death of his adulterous wife. Hightower is asked to give Joe an alibi for the night of the murder, but he refuses. Lena gives birth to her baby in the cabin where Joe and Brown used to stay, and Brown runs away from Jefferson. During the trial, Joe doesn’t confess to the murder and escapes. He hides in Hightower’s house, but Percy Grimm, a racist captain in the National Guard, finds and castrates him. Joe dies, followed by Hightower. Byron Bunch and Lena leave Jefferson with her baby. Byron wants to marry her, but she won’t accept him. 417

AUTHORS IN ACTION AND WORKS Epic poem Look and think The Green Book The Negro Motorist Green Book (published from 1936 to 1966) gave black people travelling in the Deep South the list of places where they could ‘stay safely’. They had to avoid ‘sundown towns’, all white towns where they could not even pass after sunset.

Themes • Identity and the weight of the past Identity is influenced by history, nature, society and individual lives, and a complex legacy of family pride, struggle and shame oppresses many characters. This weight is accepted passively by most of Jefferson’s residents, but some characters struggle against it in search of a personal sense of self-identity. The struggle is hardest for Joe Christmas. His lack of identity is due to his mixed origins, and it assumes tragic dimensions as his wanderings in search of completeness are just a dead end. Joanna Burden lives her life as a personal sacrifice to the cause of equality, and ironically is probably killed by Joe, who rejects what she sees as her attempt to ‘redeem’ him. Lena Grove, an orphan like Christmas, is the only one able to free herself of the oppressive burden of the past and head optimistically to an unknown future.

• Racism The novel deals with the question of Christmas’ racial identity crisis and Southern racism seventy-five years after emancipation, with many of the social mores of the South before the Civil War still clearly in place. The unsolved question of the novel is whether Christmas’ racial identity crisis is a necessary result of his biracial blood, or whether it is instead a result of society’s definitions of race. His skin is not black and he despises the blacks as most white people in that part of the country do, but the suspicion he may be of mixed origins troubles him as a dark secret he can’t share with anyone. Since he lives in a society where the primary factor in establishing a man’s identity and social status is the colour of his skin, he is profoundly divided in his attitude towards himself and others. In his desperation and isolation, Joe Christmas tries to find his place in society: he even tries to live with black people as if he were one of them, but they are suspicious and afraid of him as a white man. He is able to live among white people, but only in places where his ‘guilty’ secret is not known. Even then, however, he is unable to understand which world he really belongs to. He is always forced to hide his secret, a part of himself which he knows other people will not accept. He becomes filled with a mixture of attraction and hostility towards white people. 1 Answer the questions. 1 What colour is the cover? Why?

MIND MAP

2 What term is used to refer to black people? Is it still in use? Why?/Why not? 3 The Green Book shows that segregation and racism were accepted realities in the 1920s in the Deep South. Does this help you to understand the situation of the characters in Faulkner’s novels better? How?

model for the ‘nouveau roman’

Web quest 2 Search the web to read about and watch clips from The Green Book, a film about the book and segregation that won the Oscar for best film in 2019. How truthful is the story told in the film?

interest in Freud and Joyce

William Faulkner

decline of Southern aristocracy

sympathy to the black communities

Light in August

Jim Crow Laws – racial segregation in the South

Joe Christmas

identity – weight of the past

orphan – uncertain racial heritage

search of sense and identity

modern antihero

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 Who are the main characters of Light in August?

1 What was William Faulkner interested in as a writer?

4 What defines identity?

2 Which aspect of the reality of the South did he depict?

5 How important is racism at an individual and collective level?

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Ideas for your map: RACISM

p. 437

William Faulkner

T70 The outcast

Light in August

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The whites have found out that Joe is half black, and are furious at his making love with Bobbie, a white woman. In her confusion and terror at the accusation of immorality, she has tried to protect herself by denouncing Joe to her white friends, who are shocked and angry that a ‘negro’ should have the audacity to lay even a finger on a white woman. They beat him up and then leave him for dead. However, he regains consciousness.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. small room • lies • obey • hurt • barely • air • leave • clear • wandering • beaten • whiskey him up leave in their car, and (2)

Joe hears the men who have (1) there licking his lips. He (3)

manages to sit up and then stand up, and walks first where he drinks some (5)

through the hall and then into a (4)

onto the chest of drawers, and starts thinking that he has to (6) now (7)

, but his body won’t (8)

holding the place. His head is

him: beaten and (9)

as he is, he has to slide along the wall in the hall to keep going. His hand won’t open the door but then he goes out into the cool (10)

, happy that the men did not lock him in. He goes into

the street, beginning his 15-year-long (11)

on trains and trucks.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 How does Joe feel? 2 What does he see when he looks at himself in the mirror?

Then they were gone: the final feet1, the final door. Then he heard the car drown2 the noise of the insects, riding above, sinking to the level3, sinking below the level so that he heard only the insects. He lay there beneath the light. He could not move yet, as he could look without actually seeing, hear without actually knowing; the two wire ends not yet knit4 as he lay peacefully, licking his lips now and then as a child does. Then the wire ends knit and 5 made connection. He did not know the exact instant, save that suddenly he was aware of his ringing5 head, and he sat up slowly, discovering himself again, getting to his feet. He was dizzy6, the room went round him, slowly and smoothly as thinking7, so that thinking said Not yet. But he still felt no pain, not even when, propped before the bureau8, he examined 10 in the glass his swollen and bloody face and touched his face. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said. ‘They sure beat me up9.’ He was not thinking yet; it had not yet risen that far I reckon I better get out of here10 I reckon I better get out of here. He went toward the door, his hands out before him like a blind man or a sleepwalker. He was in the hall without having remembered passing through the door, and he found himself in another bedroom while he still hoped, perhaps not believed, that he was moving toward the front 15 door. It was small too. Yet it still seemed to be filled with the presence of the blonde woman, its very cramped harsh walls11 bulged outward with that militant and diamond surfaced respectability12. On the bare bureau sat a pint almost full of whisky. He drank it, slowly, not

1 the final feet: (giunse il rumore degli) ultimi passi 2 drown: sommergere 3 sinking to the level: calando al livello (del ronzio degli insetti) 4 the two... knit: i due fili non ancora riannodati 5 ringing: che ronzava

6 He was dizzy: Era stordito, aveva le vertigini 7 as thinking: come il suo pensiero 8 propped... bureau: aggrappato al cassettone 9 They sure... up: Mi hanno conciato per le feste 10 it had not... here: il pensiero

non si era ancora rialzato fino al punto (di riconoscere) “Farei meglio ad andar via di qui” 11 cramped harsh walls: strette dure pareti 12 bulged... respectability: impregnate di adamantina e combattiva rispettabilità

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3 Is anybody else in the house?

4 What will Joe be doing after leaving the city?

feeling the fire at all, holding himself upright by holding to the bureau. The whisky went down his throat cold as molasses, without taste. He set the empty bottle down and leaned on 20 the bureau, his head lowered, not thinking, waiting perhaps without knowing it, perhaps not even waiting. Then the whisky began to burn in him and he began to shake his head slowly from side to side, while thinking became one with the slow, hot coiling and recoiling of his entrails13. ‘I got to get out of here.’ He re-entered the hall. Now it was his head that was clear and his body that would not behave. He had to coax it14 along the hall, sliding it along 25 one wall toward the front, thinking ‘Come on, now; pull yourself together. I got to get out’. Thinking If I can just get it outside, into the air, the cool air, the cool dark he watched his hands fumbling15 at the door, trying to help them, to coax and control them. ‘Anyway, they didn’t lock it on me,’ he thought. ‘Sweet Jesus, I could not have got out until morning then. I never would have opened a window and climbed through it.’ He opened the door at 30 last and passed out and closed the door behind him, arguing again with his body which did not want to bother to close the door, having to be forced to close it upon the empty house where the two lights burned with their dead and unwavering glare16, not knowing that the house was empty and not caring, not caring anymore for silence and desolation than they had cared for the cheap and brutal nights of stale oft used17 glasses and stale oft used beds. 35 His body was acquiescing better, becoming docile. He stepped from the dark porch, into the moonlight, and with his bloody head and his empty stomach hot, savage, and courageous with whisky, he entered the street which was to run for fifteen years. The whisky died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of 40 scene, broken by intervals of begged and stolen rides18, on trains and trucks, and on country wagons with he at twenty and twenty-five and thirty19, sitting on the seat with his still, hard face and the clothes (even when soiled and worn) of a city man and the driver of the wagon not knowing who or what the passenger was and not daring to ask. (From Chapter 10)

13 coiling... entrails: avvolgersi e svolgersi delle sue viscere 14 to coax it: trascinarlo a forza di lusinghe 15 fumbling: cincischiare

16 the two lights... glare: le due lampade ardevano di immobile luce morta 17 oft used: usati spesso

18 begged and stolen rides: passaggi ottenuti per favore e rubati 19 with he... thirty: con lui a 20 anni, a 25, a 30

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 The narrator presents Joe’s beaten body indirectly by focusing on his physical reactions. What details emphasise his condition, and to what effect? 2 What is the description of the empty house behind Joe evocative of? Choose the correct option. a

the future life of Joe’s joyful wandering across the US

the desolation of Joe’s life as an outcast

the fear that all city dwellers have of violence

3 Which words reveal the reason for Joe’s immediate departure?

4 What are direct thought and indirect thought used for in the passage? Choose the correct option. a

to present Joe’s anger at the violence of the white men

t o present Joe’s slow emerging from his state of unconsciousness after the savage beating

to present the narrator’s opinion of Joe’s personality

INTERPRET 4 Joe seeks no retaliation and leaves immediately after being beaten up. Would you be able to react as he did if you or someone you care about suffered as he did? PDF

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

FILMS FOR THOUGHT

AGENDA 2030

Living in a world of prejudices The reality of racial segregation and discrimination is hard to imagine without experiencing it in person, but biopics can help to see what it could have been like to live in a Jim Crow reality where the whites and the blacks lived separated in all places; cinemas, coffee bars, elevators, public pools, shops, restaurants, means of transport, toilets, even cemeteries.

Green Book (2018) The three-Oscar winning film by Peter Farrelly depicts the friendship between Don Shirley, a black classical pianist, and Tony Lip, a white Italian bouncer. Tony is hired as a driver for Shirley and he has to handle problems that might arise in the Jim Crow-era South on a concert tour. At the time it was considered normal that different ethnic groups lived apart. The Italians lived with the Italians, the African-Americans lived with the African-Americans, but the trip changed the way Lip treated people. The biopic highlights the difference between employer – refined and very well educated – and employee – rather rustic and not very good with words –, and the way each introduced the other to his own reality.

Hidden Figures (2016) The film by Theodore Melfi depicts the life of three Afro-American women, Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson working as mathematicians for NASA at the time the space company was competing with the USSR in the space race to fly human beings into space and finally to the Moon. The three women had to face both gender and race issues because they were women – and so believed to be unqualified for top jobs – and because they were black in a time where NASA, like the whole country, was segregated. Despite that, they proved their exceptional skills and gave a fundamental contribution to the success of the NASA missions.

READ, WATCH AND THINK 1 Search the web for clips of the films. Here are some suggestions: Green Book 1 Shirley and Lip are eating Kentucky fried chicken in the car, licking their hands and enjoying every morsel of it. Shirley asks Lip what they will do with the bones. Hidden Figures 2 In an all-white male NASA team, Katherine G. Johnson takes the chalk that her boss Al Harrison gives her, and makes the incredibly complex mathematical calculations necessary for trajectory and landing on the board. Work creative 2 Imagine you can travel back in time to some point in the early 20th century, somewhere in the American Southern States, and you are black. You will stay in the past for one day only. Imagine what you will be doing during that day, with as many details as you can. Then come back to the present and relive that day. What has changed?

Ideas for your map: RACISM

p. 437

421

THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel LEARNING DIGITAL Ernest Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

PPT Ernest Hemingway PDF The Snows of Kilimanjaro DT60 The imminence of death

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Hemingway was one of the members of the Lost Generation. He was convinced they were the products of a generational breach, and wanted to capture the experience of newness in the world around them and to reject the traditional ideas of appropriate behaviour and morality. Hemingway’s travels and his meetings with artists and ordinary people made him a cosmopolitan writer. The Sun Also Rises is set in France and Spain; A Farewell to Arms in Northern Italy; For Whom the Bell Tolls in Spain; The Snows of Kilimanjaro, one of his most famous short stories, in Africa. His own experiences – hunting, skiing, boxing, bullfighting – his wartime experiences and his life in Paris after the war are all present in his works. The awareness of defeat and death, intrinsically associated with combat, whether in bullfighting or extreme sports, gives his work a sense of malaise. His heroes never give up fighting, not in defence of mere masculinity, but as a part of a code of honour that obliges man to continue fighting even though the world he lives in is contradictory and hostile.

1 Match each word/ expression (1–4) to its correct definition (a–d). 1

generational breach

malaise

International Brigades

proxy war

a military units set up by the Communist International b estrangement and incomprehension between parents and children c a feeling of unhappiness and discomfort difficult to describe d war started by a major power which does not get involved

Themes • War In A Farewell to Arms Hemingway provided an unromanticised account of World War I, thanks to the vicissitudes of the American lieutenant Frederic Henry. After being wounded, Henry begins a romantic affair with a nurse, Catherine and later witnesses the Battle of Caporetto (1917). Catherine dies just after giving birth to their stillborn baby and Henry’s desolation is emblematic of the Lost Generation’s experience of disillusionment. For Whom the Bell Tolls dramatises the events of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) fought between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. The Western democracies imposed an arms embargo on both sides, but Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sent men and materials to Franco, who finally defeated the Republicans and ruled until 1975. The evolution of Robert Jordan, Hemingway’s alter ego in the novel, from an idealistic supporter of the Republican cause to a disillusioned soldier ready to die only out of his sense of honour and love for Maria, reflects the changing perspective of the Spanish Civil War, from the enthusiasm of International Brigades who came to side with the Republicans to the reality of a proxy war for the Great Powers of Europe.

• The sea In The Old Man and the Sea Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. The man and the fish spend three days fighting, with the marlin pulling on the bait and Santiago holding onto the line until he manages to stab it with a knife and tie it to the boat. When he reaches the shore, he finds that sharks have eaten the whole marlin and all that is left is just a giant skeleton. The epic fight and the respect and compassion that Santiago shows for his ‘brother’ fish reveal a more meditative view of the myth of a man fighting with honour.

Style ▲ Ernest Hemingway on one of his safaris

422

Hemingway used a distinctly American vernacular and created a new style of fiction based on dialogue, action and silences. His prose is simple, direct and unadorned. He says as little as possible and lets the characters speak.

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1899 KEY FACT Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. He shared a love for hunting and fishing with his father (who later committed suicide).

1918 Hemingway was wounded in Italy during WWI, where he served as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross.

1921 KEY FACT Back in the US, he got a job as foreign correspondent for the ‘Toronto Star‘, and married the first of his four wives. The couple went to Paris.

WORKS

1923 Hemingway made his second trip to Spain, a country he loved.

1925

In our Time

1926

The Sun Also Rises

MIND MAP

1936 KEY FACT The Civil War broke out in Spain. Hemingway was accredited as a war correspondent.

1944 As a war correspondent he took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy during WWII. After the war he lived mainly in Cuba.

1940

1951

1929

A Farewell to Arms

1935

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls p. 423

1953 He was badly hurt in Africa in a plane crash. He started having physical and mental problems, also due to heavy drinking.

1954 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1961 He committed suicide.

The Old Man and the Sea

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

Lost Generation’s disillusionment

cosmopolitan writer

extreme sports and the sea

1 How did Hemingway see the writers of the ‘Lost Generation’? 2 How important were his own experiences for his novels? 3 What were the main themes of his works? 4 Why is Hemingway’s style innovative?

wartime experiences

life in Paris

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Full plot • The Spanish Civil War

For Whom the Bell Tolls covers a three-day period during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Hemingway was one of the writers, together with the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the British writer George Orwell, to side with the Spanish Republicans and travel to Spain.

THE PLOT Robert Jordan, a young American, is an expert in the use of explosives, and supports the guerrillas against the nationalist forces of Francisco Franco. He meets a young Spanish girl, Maria, who has been raped and brutalised during the civil war, and falls in love with her. A General assigns him the task of blowing up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia. Although Jordan realises that this won’t help the cause, he obeys orders, but some of his friends die as a result of his bombing. He himself is wounded and decides to sacrifice his life to save Maria and his friends.

Themes • The Hemingway Code Hero Robert Jordan, the protagonist of the novel, represents the ‘Hemingway Code Hero’. Hemingway defined his hero as ‘a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honour, courage and perseverance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful‘. Like all soldiers, the code Jordan lives by urges him to ‘live correctly’. His final stance raises questions concerning a man’s own responsibility in war and the validity of ideals of courage and honour for their own sake.

• The trauma of war and the loss of innocence Traumas cause all characters, both victims and perpetrators of violence, to lose their innocence. The most outstanding example is Maria, who loses her physical and psychological innocence when she is raped by a group of Fascist soldiers. Robert Jordan undergoes a similar process,

Ideas for your map: HEROISM

p. 437

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AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel

too. He came to Spain with idealism about the Republican cause but, after fighting in the war, he becomes cynical about the cause. There is no sense of glorious victory in battle, no sense of triumph or satisfaction that good prevails.

• Romantic love Robert Jordan and Maria fall in love at first sight. This gives his life new meaning and a new reason to fight following the disillusionment he feels for the Republican cause. MIND MAP

IN ACTION They said of this…

For Whom the Bell Tolls

One bell, one world Hemingway took the title of For Whom the Bell Tolls from a sermon by John Donne, the Metaphysical.

Spanish Civil War

Hemingway Code Hero

trauma of war

romantic love

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less (...) any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (From John Donne, Meditation XVII)

1 Answer the questions. 1 How do people relate to one another according to Donne? 2 How should we respond to someone’s death according to Donne? 3 Why do you think Hemingway chose Donne’s words as a title for his novel about war and death?

▲ Scene from the 1943 film adaptation of the novel starring

Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman

CHECK OUT 1 Write notes about the following points. Setting

Hemingway’s Code Hero

War and lost innocence

T71 A soldier’s mission

Romantic love

For Whom the Bell Tolls

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Robert Jordan looks at the sentry holding his post on the bridge. He is going to blow up the bridge, so the sentry will die.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. rolls • bombs • ambulance • road • sentry

EMOTIONAL LEARNING Robert recognises the (1)

, who yawns, (2)

a cigarette and lights it.

Robert puts down the glasses and stops looking at the sentry. He looks at the (3) thinks of the rabbit and Maria. A motorcyclist and then an (4) and the road. Robert hears the sound of the (5)

and

pass along the bridge .

Now read the extract and check your answers.

◀ Scene from the 1943 film adaptation of Hemingway’s novel starring Gary Cooper as Robert Jordan

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: WAR

p. 437

Ernest Hemingway

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Where and when did Robert see the sentry first?

2 What does the sentry focus on?

3 Why does Jordan stop looking at the soldier?

4 Is he worried about Maria, his lover?

5 What reminds Jordan that the war is still continuing violently?

The sentry1 sat leaning against the wall. His helmet hung on a peg2 and his face showed clearly. Robert Jordan saw he was the same man who had been there on guard two days before in the afternoon watch. He was wearing the same knitted stocking-cap. And he had not shaved3. His cheeks were sunken4 and his cheekbones prominent. He had bushy eyebrows that grew together in the center. He looked sleepy and as Robert Jordan watched him he yawned5. Then he took out a tobacco pouch and a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette. He tried to make a lighter work and finally put it in his pocket and went over to the brazier6, leaned over, reached inside, brought up a piece of charcoal7, juggled it in one hand while he blew on it, then lit the cigarette and tossed the lump of charcoal back into the brazier. Robert Jordan, looking through the Zeiss 8 power glasses, watched his face as he leaned against the wall of the sentry box drawing on9 the cigarette. Then he took the glasses down, folded them together and put them in his pocket. I won’t look at him again, he told himself. He lay there and watched the road and tried not to think at all. He rubbed his elbows against the pine needles10 but it was not the same11. Nobody knows how lonely you can be when you do this. Me, though, I know. I hope that Rabbit12 will get out of this all right. Stop that now. Yes, sure. But I can hope that and I do. That I blow it well and that she gets out all right. Good. Sure. Just that. That is all I want now. He lay there now and looked away from the road and the sentry box and across to the far mountain. Just do not think at all, he told himself. It was a fine early summer morning and it came very fast now in the end of May. Once a motorcyclist in a leather coat and all-leather helmet with an automatic rifle in a holster13 by his left leg came across the bridge and went on up the road. Once an ambulance crossed the bridge, passed below him, and went up the road. But that was all. He smelled the pines and he heard the stream and the bridge showed clear now and beautiful in the morning light. He lay there behind the pine tree, with the submachine gun14 across his left forearm, and he never looked at the sentry box again until, long after it seemed that it was never coming, that nothing could happen on such a lovely late May morning, he heard the sudden, clustered, thudding15 of the bombs. (From Chapter 43)

1 sentry: sentinella 2 peg: gancio 3 shaved: rasato 4 sunken: scavate 5 yawned: sbadigliò 6 brazier: braciere

7 charcoal: carbone 8 Lo Zeiss è un cannocchiale. 9 drawing on: che tirava (si fumava) 10 pine needles: aghi di pino 11 Jordan ricordava che si era sentito a suo agio quando si era

sdraiato in mezzo agli aghi di pino (Capitolo 1), ma ora tutto è cambiato. 12 Jordan teme che il coniglio che ha notato muoia nell’attacco. Il coniglio gli fa venire in mente

Maria, la sua donna, che chiama teneramente “Rabbit”. 13 holster: fondina 14 submachine gun: mitragliatrice 15 clustered, thudding: suono sordo e concentrato

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which details in the sentry’s description show that he is neither on the alert nor highly motivated?

to show Robert’s thoughts and how his actions reflect his uncertainties

2 What does the sentry represent for Jordan? Choose from among the following.

to avoid direct interpretation of Robert’s behaviour and thoughts

a much hated enemy

someone he doesn’t care about

a human being who is going to become a victim of war

3 In completing his mission, Jordan will have to kill. What are his reactions to this idea? 4 Robert moves between loneliness and hope; loneliness for whom, and hope for whom? 5 How does the narrator use report, focalised through Jordan, and free direct thought? Choose all the correct options. a

DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Obedience to superior orders wipes out individual moral responsibility

Group A claim that a person is not morally responsible if they are executing superior orders. Group B claim that a person remains responsible for what they do even when they execute orders.

to identify with Robert’s perceptions and doubts PDF

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THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel LEARNING DIGITAL John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

• The Grapes of Wrath: full plot • The Dust Bowl exodus • Route 66, the route of hope?

PDF

Profile John Steinbeck was deeply struck by the loss of homes and jobs of so many workers during the era of the Great Depression. His works offered a social commentary on the condition of common people and agricultural labour in California, in particular on their relationship to the land. Central themes of his works are compassion for other people suffering adversity and the friendship and unity of powerless people to support one another against the rich who exploit them. The ‘visionary’ realism of his style included dreams, the unconscious, recurring myths and symbolic characters.

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1–3) to its correct definition (a–c). 1

the Okies

Dust Bowl

Route 66

a the main road from Chicago to Los Angeles from 1926 until the 1960s b the prairies struck by dust storms and eroded by the wind c very poor immigrants from Oklahoma and nearby states

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) The Grapes of Wrath depicts the hard lives of migrants, the Okies, to California. The severe ‘Dust Bowl’ devastated the American and Canadian prairies in the 1930s. More than 350,000 Dust Bowl exiles from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas were evicted from their family farms and moved along Route 66 to California in desperate search of work, but their hopes were often disappointed because there were too many of them to find employment. They encountered the persecution of authorities and the hatred of the local population, who felt threatened by the mass of dispossessed people moving along the state. In his novel, Steinbeck charts the daily agony of these people as a mythic quest for a land of Eden and focuses on the personal difficulties of the Joads – a family of poor farmers from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

THE PLOT In Depression-era Oklahoma, Tom Joad, the protagonist, is fresh out of prison and invites Casy, a former preacher, to join him on his walk home, but Tom finds the Joad farm empty because, like other farmers, the Joads are about to leave for California. During the journey, Granpa dies in the tent of another family of migrants, the Wilsons. For a while the two families travel together, but when they reach the border of California, one of the Wilsons is so sick that they can’t continue, so the Joads continue across the Californian desert on their own. The Joads stop at a dirty Hooverville of tents and temporary shelters, and then travel south to a government-run camp in Weedpatch. Here the community governs itself, but after a month, the Joads are still unable to find any work and they move on. They are offered work picking peaches in Tulare, and Tom again meets Casy, who is leading a strike. Casy is killed, and Tom becomes a fugitive because he beats up Casy’s killer. The Joads move on again, and in the end Tom leaves his family for his own safety. The cotton picking that they have found employment in slows and it starts raining steadily. Rose Joad’s baby is stillborn, and she breastfeeds a starving man that they find in a farm building.

Themes The Joads’ loss of their land (their small farm) represents the situation of thousands of families. Proud of being farmers, bound to the land they worked on and loved, the loss of their land drives them into homelessness. The promised land itself, California, turns out to be an illusory hope for the thousands of migrants who reach it after camping along Route 66. The forces that deprive them of everything is symbolically represented by the ‘monster’, the bank which only seeks profit. Landowners also lose their humanity as they accept the idea that the god of profit rules everybody’s life. 426

The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1902 KEY FACT Steinbeck was born into a family of moderate means in Salinas, California. He went to college at Stanford University but never graduated.

1925 He went to New York, where he unsuccessfully tried to establish himself as a freelance writer. He returned to California.

1935

WORKS

IN ACTION Look and think

The power of dust

1962 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1932 After finally gaining success with his works, he served as a war correspondent during World War II.

Tortilla Flat

1937

Of Mice and Men

1939

The Grapes of Wrath p. 426

1945

Cannery Row

1947

The Pearl

1950

Burning Bright

1952

East of Eden

1962

Travels with Charley

Steinbeck’s sympathy lies with the dispossessed people, their loneliness, their connection to places, their desire for land, their capacity for survival and mutual help. The novel ends on the symbolically powerful scene of Rose, the Joads’ oldest daughter, breastfeeding a dying man. This scene best represents the hope that should inspire everybody to act for positive change and be compassionate.

Structure and style The novel is written in a series of chapters and inter-chapters, alternating the detailed narration of the Joad family’s journey to the West and a more general observation of society at work. Steinbeck faithfully reproduces Oky language, ungrammatical and elementary, but also exploits the power of symbols. For example, the turtle in Chapter 3 is a metaphor for the Joad family – and for other migrant families. It moves slowly, carrying its home on its back, and fights all kinds of adversity, never losing its determination to carry on. Similarly, migrant families had to carry whatever was left of their homes with them wherever they went. ▲ A dust storm approaching some farms in Texas in 1935

2 Answer the questions.

MIND MAP

John Steinbeck

1 What is there is the background? 2 What do you think will happen to the houses?

Great Depression

The Grapes of Wrath

3 Imagine you were in that storm. How would you feel? condition of common people compassion for the dispossessed

the Okies during the Dust Bowl

the Joad family

the bank, a.k.a. ‘the monster’

loss of their land desperate search for work

god of profit

quest for a land of Eden

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 What does The Grapes of Wrath describe?

1 What themes does Steinbeck consider?

4 Which family stands at the centre of the narrative?

2 What characterises his style?

5 What disaster strikes the Joads, and how do they respond to it?

Ideas for your map: EXPLOITATION

p. 437

427

AUTHORS AND WORKS American novel LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T72 A lost Paradise 79 The Grapes of Wrath

Enormous crowds of migrants, the Okies, reach the Golden State, California. Founded by invaders who stole the land from Mexicans, California had been the setting for a series of desperate measures taken by ‘frantic hungry men‘, the predecessors of the rich landowners. These now fear that history will repeat itself, and that the migrant farmers, who want land and food, will put the owners’ wealth at risk.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. hunger • feed • profit • crime • uncultivated • hate • furious • west

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The migrants are going (1)

. Their constant worry is (2)

, especially for

their children. They are heading towards California in search of food and land to cultivate. They are (3)

and strong, while the Californians are rich and weak and (4)

Okies. In California they see that some lands are left (5) because there is no (6)

, and the oranges thrown away

in cultivating the fields or selling the oranges at a low price.

To the Okies this is a sin and a (7) (8)

the

. Their children are starving, and they can’t work to

them because they have no land.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Where are the migrants from?

2 Which three social groups hate the Okies?

3 How many are there?

The dispossessed1 were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out2. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed3 over the mountains, hungry and restless4—restless as ants, scurrying5 to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut—anything, 5 any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land. We ain’t6 foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an’ they was lots of our folks7 in the Civil War8—both sides. Americans. They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found 10 only hatred. Okies—the owners hated them because the owners knew they were soft and the Okies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry […]. And in the towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no shorter path to a storekeeper’s contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite. The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing. And 15 the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more. And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thousand. […] And while the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security, the 20 new barbarians wanted only two things—land and food; and to them the two were one. And 1 The dispossed: gli sfrattati/ nullatenenti/senza radici 2 dusted… out: spinti fuori dalle tempeste di sabbia e dai trattori 3 streamed: fluivano 4 restless: inquieti

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

5 scurrying: precipitandosi di fretta 6 ain’t: colloquiale per aren’t 7 an’ they… folks: colloquiale per and there were a lot of our ancestors

8 La Revolution, la Guerra di Indipendenza Americana (1775– 83), e la Civil War (1861–65), la guerra di secessione combattuta fra Nord e Sud, sono due eventi cruciali della storia americana.

John Steinbeck

4 What do the Okies wish they could do?

5 Why are there guards?

whereas the wants of the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the roads, lying there to be seen and coveted9: the good fields with water to be dug for, the good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally10 in the hand, grass to smell, oaten stalks11 to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat. A man might look at a 25 fallow12 field and know, and see in his mind that his own bending back and his own straining arms would bring the cabbages into the light, and the golden eating corn, the turnips and carrots13. And a homeless hungry man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime 30 against the thin children. And such a man drove along the roads and knew temptation at every field […]. The fields goaded14 him […]. And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges in the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped15 if the price was low. 35 (Abridged from Chapter 19) 9 coveted: bramato 10 crumble experimentally: farlo tentativamente a pezzetti (per provarne la morbidezza) 11 oaten stalks: steli di avena 12 fallow: incolto

13 L’Oky guarda il campo vuoto e immagina i cavoli, il grano, le rape e le carote che potrebbe coltivarci se solo gli fosse permesso. Ma poiché non ne verrebbe profitto al proprietario

terriero, i campi restano vuoti e gli Okies senza terra e cibo. 14 goaded: pungolavano 15 dumped: gettati via (come spazzatura)

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which three epithets are used to define the Okies? Which epithet reflects the point of view of the Californians? 2 How would you describe the Okies’ relationship to the land? 3 How different is the language to talk about the Okies and the one used to talk about California? 4 Choose all the correct options. 1 The Okies are compared to ‘restless ants’ in order to underline a

their huge numbers, and their perseverance and industriousness.

their capacity for cooperation and mutual help.

2 The Okies consider themselves as a

invaders of a land which belongs to the Californians.

Americans, who also have a right to land and work in California.

3 When they consider their ancestors, the Okies are a

roud of their origins. Their ancestors have made the history of p America.

umbled by their present poverty when compared to the wealth h of their ancestors. WEB QUEST

5 Surf the web to look for information concerning migration today (choose one area/source – statistical data, reports from international organisations, articles from newspapers, blogs and forums, etc.), and with the results of your findings prepare a presentation for the class.

DEBATE 6 Debate the statement in groups.

Migrants are always a resource for the country that they settle in. Group A believe that a country always benefits from the arrival of migrants Group B believe that the arrival of migrants may cause problems. PDF

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ACROSS TIME The dispossessed in today’s AND SPACE world

AGENDA 2030

Evicted (2017)

by Matthew Desmond LIFE

WORK

• Matthew Desmond is an American sociologist and teaches Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also the principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. • His book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Evicted1 by Matthew Desmond tells the story of eight families in extreme poverty who struggle to pay their rent and highlights the issues of poverty, affordable housing, and economic exploitation in the poorest areas of the United States. Eviction is one of 21st-century America’s most devastating problems: most poor families are spending more than half of their income on rent, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers.

T73 Arleen’s homes 80 Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying the rent for their rundown flat. Her last landlord, Sherrena, a former schoolteacher turned entrepreneur, at first helps Arleen, but later on she evicts her.

1 Evicted: Sfrattati 2 curb: (qui) marciapiede 3 bonded storage: deposito franco 4 churning: essere sbattuti qua e là

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The Modern Age

The day Arleen and her boys had to be out was cold. But if she waited any longer, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive with a gun, a team of boot-footed movers, and a folded judge’s order saying that her house was no longer hers. She would be given two options: truck or curb2. “Truck” would mean that her things would be loaded into a van and later checked into bonded storage3. She could get everything back after paying $350. Arleen didn’t have $350, 5 so she would have opted for “curb,” which would mean watching the movers pile everything onto the sidewalk. Her mattresses. A floor-model television. Her copy of Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline. Her nice glass dining table and the lace tablecloth that fit just-so. Silk plants. Bibles. The meat cuts in the freezer. The shower curtain. Jafaris’s asthma machine. Arleen took her sons—Jori was thirteen, Jafaris was five—to a homeless shelter, which 10 everyone called the Lodge so you could tell your kids, “We’re staying at the Lodge tonight,” like it was a motel. […] Jafaris and his brother had grown used to churning4 through different apartments, neighborhoods, and schools. In the seventh and eighth grades, Jori had attended five schools; when the family was homeless he often skipped class to help 15 Arleen look for a new place. Arleen stayed in the 120-bed shelter until April, when she found a house on Nineteenth and Hampton, in the predominantly black inner city, not far from her childhood home. […] There was often no water in the house, and Jori had to bucket out what was in the toilet. But Arleen loved that it was spacious and set apart from other houses. “It was quiet,” she 20 remembered. “It was my favorite place.” After a few weeks, the city found Arleen’s favorite place “unfit for human habitation,” removed her, nailed green boards over the windows and doors, and issued a fine to her landlord. Arleen moved Jori and Jafaris into a drab apartment complex deeper in the inner city, on Atkinson Avenue, which she soon learned was a haven for drug dealers. She feared for her boys, especially Jori—slack-shouldered, with pecan-brown skin and a beautiful smile—who would talk to anyone. 25 Arleen endured four summer months on Atkinson before moving into a bottom duplex unit a mile away. She and the boys walked their things over. Arleen held her breath and tried the lights, smiling with relief when they came on. She could live off someone else’s electricity bill for a while. There was a fist-sized hole in a living-room window, the front door had to

▲▶ Photos by Michael Kienitz during evictions.

be locked with an ugly wooden plank, and the carpet was filthy. But the kitchen was spacious 30 and the living room well lit. Arleen stuffed a piece of clothing into the window hole and hung ivory curtains. The rent was $550 a month, utilities not included, the going rate in 2008 for a two-bedroom unit in one of the worst neighborhoods in America’s fourth-poorest city. Arleen couldn’t find a cheaper place, at least not one fit for human habitation, and most landlords wouldn’t rent her a smaller one on account of her boys. The rent would take 88 35 percent of Arleen’s $628-a-month welfare check. […] There was a knock at the door. It was the landlord, Sherrena Tarver. Sherrena, a black woman with bobbed hair and fresh nails, was loaded down with groceries. She had spent $40 of her own money and picked up the rest at a food pantry. She knew Arleen needed it. Arleen thanked Sherrena and closed the 40 door. Things were off to a good start. […] During the Depression, eviction riots erupted, though the number of poor families who faced eviction each year was a fraction of what it is today. These days, evictions are too commonplace to attract attention. There are sheriff squads whose full-time job is to carry out eviction orders. Some moving companies specialize in evictions, their crews working all day long, five days a week. Hundreds of data-mining companies sell landlords tenant-screening reports that list past 45 evictions and court filings. Meanwhile, families have watched their incomes stagnate or fall as their housing costs have soared. Today, the majority of poor renting families spend more than half their income on housing, and millions of Americans are evicted every year.

UNDERSTAND

INTERPRET

1 Answer the questions. 1 What problems does Arleen have? 2 What two options do evicted people have if the sheriff is called? What does Arleen choose and why? 3 How many times did Arleen change house before moving to her present home? 4 How has this situation affected Arleen’s sons’ everyday life? 5 In the last part Desmond compares evictions during the Depression and today’s evictions. What has changed?

2 The author advocates for a universal housing programme from the government for poor families so that they pay no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Do you think it would be a good measure? Do you have any other suggestions?

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THE USA AUTHORS AND WORKS Regionalist poetry LEARNING DIGITAL Langston Hughes and I, Too, Sing America PDF

Langston Hughes (1902–1967)

DT61 The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Profile Poet, story-writer and dramatist, Langston Hughes was the leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance ( p. 408). He believed that art should be made accessible to as many people as possible and he celebrated not only universal humanity, but specifically black culture and music. His grandmother had introduced him to the black American oral tradition and political activism in defence of the rights of black people. His aim was to portray working-class black lives honestly, with neither sentimental idealisation nor negative stereotypes. Hughes also became known for the character of Jesse B. Simple that he created in the 1940s for the ‘Chicago Defender‘ and ‘New York Post‘. His stories, written in dialect and full of humour, depicted the everyday experiences of a poor, but likable and sensible black man in a racist society. Hughes was also a social activist, and expressed his deep concern with, and support for, the African-American people’s non-violent struggle for freedom.

Themes • The American dream In line with the celebration of Americanness by Walt Whitman ( p. 322), Hughes addresses the ideals of happiness and wealth represented by the American dream from the perspective of African Americans, Indigenous Americans, oppressed immigrants, and poor farmers. Liberty and equality are out of reach for these groups, and people suffer because of prejudice, oppression, and poverty. However, in his poems, Hughes often shows that they keep dreaming of a better life and never give up, despite discrimination and injustice.

▶ Segregated store for migrant

workers in Belle Glade, Florida, 1941. Police-order segregation was designed to assure only AfroAmericans populated the spot.

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The Modern Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1902 KEY FACT Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. He was raised by his maternal grandmother because his parents were separated and his mother was often away.

1920 He spent a year at Columbia University in New York City, but decided to stop studying and started touring the world.

1924 He lived for a short while in Paris and went back to the US to continue his studies.

1938 KEY FACT He founded and directed the Harlem Suitcase Theatre, whose mission was to promote interracial plays.

1929 He graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania and in the next decade he travelled around the US and also abroad on lecture tours.

1930

WORKS

Not Without Laughter

1935

Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South

1942–62 KEY FACT He had a column in a leading black newspaper, ‘The Chicago Defender‘.

1945

I, Too, Sing America p. 434

1965

Simple’s Uncle Sam

• Black pride and racism

IN ACTION Across time and space

The Black Spirit For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; (From For My People, 1930, by Margaret Walker, American poet and member of the Chicago Black Renaissance)

Hughes presented the idea of black pride, summarised in the famous sentence ‘Black is beautiful‘. He wanted to teach Afro-Americans to feel proud of their racial origins. On the other hand, his poems reveal the problems of racism and the persecution and discrimination suffered by black people in the US. He pushed for a radical reform of the laws and attitudes of white Americans and a manifest wish for integration between Blacks and Whites, with each nonetheless preserving their own individuality.

Language and style Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poetry and by the liberating model of Modernist poetry ( p. 348), Hughes experimented with free verse, also according to the oral and improvisational traditions of Black culture: spirituals, Gospel, sermons, Afro-American and jazz music. In particular, he used repetitions from blues, with a line repeated and then altered. He uses simple unsophisticated language, and also dialect.

1 Answer the questions. 1 What do black people do? 2 Does the speaker identify with them? 3 What type of songs do they sing? 4 Why do you think both Hughes and Walker consider blues in their works?

MIND MAP

leading voice of Harlem Renaissance

working class black life

American Dream

Langston Hughes

free verse

‘Black is beautiful’

Blues

integration Blacks-Whites

pride for racial origins

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What movement did Langston Hughes belong to, and what view did he have of his art?

3 How did he portray the American dream?

2 How did he paint the black working class?

5 What characterises his style?

4 What themes are central to his works?

Ideas for your map: RACISM

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Regionalist poetry LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

T74 I, Too, Sing America 81 Written at a time when racist feelings were still considered acceptable in America, the poem asserts both Hughes’ African-American identity and his pride in belonging to the whole of American society as it echoes Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing ( p. 325).

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. change • black • eats • whites • kitchen

EMOTIONAL LEARNING The speaker claims that he is (1)

and this means America, too. Although he sits in the

(2)

as ordered, he (3)

(4)

. The (5)

to become stronger and one day things will will no longer segregate him and feel ashamed.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

I, too, sing America.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh

1 Who is ‘they’?

And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table 10 When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. 15

2 What time is ‘tomorrow’?

Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed – I, too, am America.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Does the speaker get angry or feel humbled? 2 What makes the speaker proud of himself?

3 How does the speaker see himself?

INTERPRET 4 Is the speaker in this poem obedient and submissive? Underline the words in the poem to support your answer. What does the word ‘too’ in the first and last lines refer to?

3 The kitchen metaphor works on both a literal and metaphorical level. Why? PDF

434

The Modern Age – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

RIGHTS FOR ALL

Making sense of one’s identity

AGENDA 2030

After Walt Whitman made the cry ‘I hear America singing‘ in the eponymous poem in 1860, other writers have repeated his words to claim both their identity and rights as part of America.

T75 I, Too, Sing América (2002) 82 by Julia Alvarez

LIFE

WORK

• Julia Alvarez (1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. • Her first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), explores the theme of identity and being different, of being caught between two cultures.

Julia Alvarez proudly widens the horizon of Americanness including her Dominican heritage and exploiting the wealth of belonging to two worlds and mastering two languages.

I know it’s been said before but not in this voice of the plátano and the mango, marimba y bongó, not in this sancocho1 of inglés con español.

Ay sí, it’s my turn to oh say what I see, I’m going to sing America! with all América 15 inside me: from the soles of Tierra del Fuego to the thin waist of Chiriquí2 20 up the spine of the Mississippi through the heartland of the Yanquis3 to the great plain face of Canada — all of us 25 singing America, the whole hemispheric 10

1 sancocho: miscuglio 2 Chiriquí: a province of Panama 3 Yanquis: Yankees, americani bianchi 4 Ya llegó: arrivò

UNDERSTAND 1 Answer the questions. 1 What does Alvarez refer to? 2 What does ‘this voice’ refer to? 3 What does ‘that white/and red and blue song’ refer to? ANALYSE 2 Answer the questions. 1 What parts of America are inside the poet?

familia belting our canción, singing our brown skin 30 into that white and red and blue song — the big song that sings all America, 35 el canto que cuenta con toda América: un new song! Ya llegó4 el momento, 40 our moment under the sun — ese sol that shines on everyone. So, hit it maestro! 45 give us that Latin beat, ¡Uno-dos-tres! One-two-three! Ay sí, (y bilingually): 50 Yo también soy América I, too, am America

2 What metaphor does she use for these lands? 3 Look at the title. What difference do you notice between this and Hughes’s poem? Why is this so?

DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

A person’s identity is richer if their backgrounds are mixed. Group A claim that your identity is stronger if you have mixed origins.

INTERPRET 3 Alvarez once wrote: ‘I see myself more and more as an American writer, not just in the national but in the hemispheric sense.’ What does she mean in your opinion?

Group B claim that a sense of personal identity is more difficult to achieve if you have mixed origins.

Ideas for your map: MULTICULTURALISM

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6T HE MODERN AGE

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share

KEY WORDS

1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Write a short definition for each.

THINKING SKILLS

5 Post-Modernist poets were interested in social and political issues.

2 The New Deal was a series of government programmes.

6 War Poets showed the crude reality of World War I.

3 There were two alliances in World War II.

7 Free verse is dominant in Modernist poetry.

4 Modernism in literature was experimental and cosmopolitan.

8 William Faulkner shows the reality of racial issues in the USA.

Explain 1 The Treaty of Versailles was too hard on Germany. 2 Transitional novelists contributed to the transformation of the modern novel. 3 Modernist poetry expressed the alienation and solitude of modern man. 4 Thomas Stearns Eliot’s The Waste Land was a highly innovative work. 5 Ulysses by James Joyce is an original interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. Justify 1 Both psychology and science modified the ordinary perception of time in Modernism. 2 George Orwell favoured Socialism against any form of tyranny. Compare 1 The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression were totally different periods in American history. 2 The stream-of-consciousness novel employs techniques totally unlike those of the realist novel. 3 Both Joseph Conrad and Edward Morgan Forster deal with the issues of British colonialism. 4 James Joyce and Virginia Woolf employed interior monologues but in different ways. 5 Both The Great Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath talk about the American Dream but in different terms. Assess 1 The British Empire never truly collapsed but rather evolved into the Commonwealth. 2 The ‘mythical method’ has taken the place of the narrative method. 3 Ernest Hemingway’s ‘code of honour’ for heroism is still valid today.

STORYTELLING

WRITING

3 Write an impossible interview with Eveline, the protagonist of Joyce’s story. Twenty years have passed since she failed to leave Ireland with Frank. She tells you about her present life, the twenty years she spent in Ireland and how she feels about her choice not to follow Frank.

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay underlining similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • The various phases of development of the modern novel • The various phases of development of modern poetry • The various lines of development of American literature

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IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL

THE MODERN AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

art

war revolution / totalitarianism

indifference

time / growth

experimentation / crisis / independence

stream-of-consciousness / psychological analysis

racism / human rights / exploitation

American dream / heroism / multiculturalism

evil / sterility / life

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme of war. Step 1 Read this consideration about the reality of war in the 20th century: The two World Wars of the 20th century involved the entire populations of belligerent countries; both combatants and non-combatants. The burden of war shifted more and more often from armed forces to civilians; civilians are not just victims, but also targets of military operations. Focus on the idea of war, and discuss what it represents for you and how ordinary people experience Step 2 it in today’s world. Step 3 Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view. 2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about war. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English Blitz in East London during WWII Physics Radioactivity Enrico Fermi and the first atomic bombs.

Spanish Réquiem por un campesino español (Ramón J. Sender, 1953) The Spanish Civil War.

German All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues, Erich Maria Remarque, 1928) The soldiers’ trauma at war.

Latin De rerum natura (Lucrezio, 1st century BCE) The brutality and inhumanity of war. History The alliances of the two World Wars. The Spanish Civil War as a proxy war.

French Liberté (Paul Éluard, 1942) Poetry against the Nazi regime and the French Collaboration Front.

Art Guernica (Pablo Picasso, 1937) The reality of modern wars

Italian L’allegria (Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1916) Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (Italo Calvino, 1947) Il partigiano Johnny (Beppe Fenoglio, 1968) The wars and their victims.

A visual representation of the horrors of war.

Philosophy Georg Hegel Friederich Nietzsche The inevitability of war as part The war as the inevitable state of the dialectical process. of human life in the conflict of Dionysian and Apollonian spirits. 437

THE COLD WAR AGE (1945–1990) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Change and fight

THINKING ROUTINE

1 What do you associate with the idea of change and fight? radicalism • hope • revolution • fear • contrast • hostility • hope • defence of one’s rights 2 Look at the pictures and answer the questions. The Vietnam War 1 What does the picture show? 2 Are the soldiers clearly visible? 3 Where may the smoke come from? 4 What are your feelings about the picture? Positive or negative? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 5 Where can you see the name of the rock band? 6 How colourful is the cover? 7 Which of the cardboard figures are you familiar with? 8 What are your feelings about the picture? Positive or negative? Which is which? 3 What do change (C) and fight (F) involve? Circle the correct options. 1 going to war to defend your country C F 2 to engage in social protest

C F

3 to defend yourself and others from aggression C F 4 to create new forms of expression

438

C F

▲ The Vietnam War (1955–75) was one of the major conflicts of the Cold War. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The US army fought against both the Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese conventional forces. The war dragged on without success, and it encountered growing opposition in the US.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping into texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) The Beatles, a rock band with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The cover was designed by pop artists Jann Haworth and Peter Blake as a group photo after a Beatles concert. The Fab Four appear in military-style costumes as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Behind them there are 58 cardboard cut-outs of famous people.

Ideas for your map: CHANGE

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HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Key Facts A divided world

LEARNING DIGITAL

1947-1969 • The Cold War • The Moon landing • The fall of the Berlin Wall • The Marshall Plan and the EU • Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister The Cold War Age: History and Society

PPT

• History narrated: The Cold War Age ( Digital resources, Study Booster) • Why did the Berlin Wall fall in 1989? • Royal dynasties: The House of Windsor

PDF

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each expression (1-4) to the correct definition (a-d). 1

The Cold War

The Iron Curtain

proxy war

Thatcherite revolution

a a conflict where opposite nations do not fight directly but through the wars of other nations b a metaphor for the extreme political and ideological separation between the two blocks in the Cold War c the radical changes brought to the British economy d the state of hostility that existed between the Soviet-bloc countries, led by the USSR, and the Western powers, led by the USA, with no open conflict 440

THE TWO BLOCKS AND THE SPACE WAR

In 1947, the US government introduced the Marshall Plan, which provided financial aid to friendly nations to protect them against Communism. Europe underwent an economic boom from the 1950s to the early 1970s. In 1949, the USA and eleven other Western nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) whereas in 1955, the Soviet Union and other Communist nations founded the Warsaw Pact, which was dissolved in 1991. Atomic weapons were developed in a renewed arms race. Space exploration served as another arena for Cold War competition, with the Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, launched by the USSR in 1957. The US responded by launching the first man into space in 1961 and finally landing on the Moon in 1969.

The Cold War Age – Key Facts

1949

GERMANY AND THE IRON CURTAIN

1950-75

PROXY WARS AROUND THE GLOBE

In Asia the two most significant proxy wars related to the Cold War were the Korean War (1950-53) and the Vietnam War (1955-75). Two years after In 1949 two separate states were the Soviet Union and the US created out of Nazi Germany: divided Korea into two states in the German Federal Republic in 1948, a socialist republic in the the West (the BRD, in German), north and a capitalist state in the and the German Democratic south, the armed forces of the Republic in the East (the Democratic People’s Republic of DDR, in German). Berlin was Korea, supported by the USSR, divided into occupation zones invaded South Korea and war controlled by the four great broke out. The 1953 armistice superpowers (USA, USSR, UK recognised the pre-war situation, and France). In August 1961, leaving the border between the the Soviets built a granite wall two Koreas at the 38th parallel. which cut the city in two and The Vietnam War started off as symbolised the ‘Iron Curtain’ the defence of South Vietnam by that separated Western Europe the US against the aggression and the Eastern bloc. of the North Vietnamese, who were supported by the USSR and China; it caused much protest also in the US, which reached their peak with the march against the Vietnam War held in Washington on April 17th, 1965. These were also the years of black civil rights, youth protest, feminism and gay movements.

1950-85

THE BIRTH OF THE EU

The European nations gave origin to what has now become the European Union. There was an initial phase of economic union with the European Coal and Steel Community (1950) followed by the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market (1958). Britain initially stood aside and joined the Community only in 1973. The 1985 Schengen agreements gradually allowed people to travel without passport checks at borders between the Schengen countries.

1952-2022

1961-63

QUEEN ELISABETH II AND MARGARET THATCHER

George VI was succeeded by his daughter Elizabeth II in 1952; the country had huge foreign debts, industry was in decline and taxation and inflation were high. The fiasco of the Suez Crisis in 1956 was a deep blow to Britain’s reputation as a world power. There were many strikes in the years 1978-79 and in 1979 Conservative Margaret Thatcher won the elections. Her ideas as Prime Minister produced the Thatcherite Revolution, whose main principles were a strong belief in private enterprise and the privatisation of nationalised companies. She privatised many of the most important service industries; the most significant episode in international politics was the victory in the Falklands War (1982) against Argentina. Mrs Thatcher’s opposition to European integration made her position within her own party increasingly difficult and, in November 1990, she resigned.

1989-90

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY’S PRESIDENCY

THE END OF THE USSR

During JFK’s presidency, interrupted by his assassination in Dallas in 1963, the Bay of Pigs Invasion in October 1961 (a failed attempt by US-sponsored Cuban exiles to reverse Fidel Castro’s Cuban Communist revolution of 1958) strengthened Soviet-Cuban relations and led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Soviet missiles were placed in Cuba. It was the closest the Cold War came to becoming a full-scale nuclear war, and led to the creation of the MoscowWashington hotline to allow fast and direct communication between the two superpowers and so avoid a global nuclear conflict.

In 1989, many events led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Poland, the political party and union Solidarność (Solidarity) won a complete victory over the Communists in the country’s first free elections. In Hungary, the parliament put into law democratic reforms and put pressure on the Soviets to pull out their troops. The Czech parliament ended Communist domination and Romanian demonstrators overthrew the Communist government. The gates of the Berlin Wall were opened in November 1989. In 1990, Germany was reunified and the Soviet Union officially dissolved.

Ideas for your map: WAR/PROTEST/COOPERATION

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StoryTelling NINETEEN SIXTY-EIGHT Confrontations and achievements • 1968 was a year of generational and ideological unrest on issues ranging from civil rights to women’s liberation, from nuclear weapons to the Vietnam War. But it was also a time of great achievements and social conquests.

HISTORY TIMELINE Vietnam – US involvement in Vietnam and the Tet Offensive JANUARY

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam and the United States. Many American soldiers lost their lives, and this had a huge effect on the American government while public support for the war soon declined. The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War.

▲ Vietnamese rangers defend Saigon after the Tet Offensive.

Italy – Valle Giulia

MARCH

During a demonstration known as the Battle of Valle Giulia a clash took place between students and police in the Faculty of Architecture at Rome University. The protest opened a season of students’ and workers’ unrest in Italy called ‘Il Sessantotto’.

Czechoslovakia – Prague Spring

Czechoslovakia, a country within the Soviet influence, started a period of democratic reforms and abolished censorship, a step forward in the country’s expansion of freedom during the so-called Prague Spring. This angered the Soviet Union.

US – Assassination of Martin Luther King APRIL

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots in more than 100 cities in the United States followed. As with the killing of Malcolm X in 1964, Martin Luther King’s death opened a new era of African American activism in many areas of society.

France – The French May MAY

During a protest march in Paris a riot took place between university students and the police. One million French citizens took to the streets against capitalism, consumerism, and traditional institutions starting a period of general strikes and occupations of factories and universities throughout France.

US – Assassination of Robert Kennedy Five years after the assassination of his brother, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot dead in Los Angeles, California. In early 1968, Robert Kennedy had entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

JUNE

Britain – The Dagenham Women’s Strike Nearly 200 women sewing machinists at the Ford Company plant in Dagenham, Essex, went on strike because their jobs were considered less skilled than men’s and their pay was 85% of the rate paid to men. After four weeks on strike, the women’s pay was raised to 92% of that of men.

JULY

AUGUST

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The Cold War Age

London, Moscow, Washington – Signature of NPT The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (with the aim of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons) was signed by the United States, Britain, the USSR and 58 other nations.

Czechoslovakia – Invasion by Soviet troops to crack down reforms After the Czech government‘s liberalising reforms during the so-called Prague Spring, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in response to the country’s expansion of freedom.

US – Women’s protest at Miss America beauty contest SEPTEMBER

A group of women activists gathered in Atlantic City to protest the image of womanhood conveyed by the Miss America Pageant. The large number of protesters gave the growing women’s movement a boost of publicity.

Northern Ireland – October 5th Civil Rights March During a march to draw attention to discriminatory policies against the Catholic population, chaos erupted when the police beat the protesters indiscriminately. For many, this date is considered the birthdate of the civil-rights movement and the origin of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Mexico – Massacre in Mexico City

OCTOBER

Ten days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops shot into a crowd of unarmed students. Thousands of students were beaten and jailed, and many disappeared. The total number of deaths remains a mystery.

▲ A mural in Derry depicting events

during the Troubles in Northern Ireland

Mexico – Black Power at Olympic Games The Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, awarded the gold and bronze medals in the 200-metre race. Both had raised a black gloved fist (a black power salute) during the American national anthem as a protest against racial discrimination in the USA.

US – An end to bombardment of North Vietnam US President Lyndon Johnson announced that the bombing operation in North Vietnam would end on November 1st in anticipation of peace talks in Paris between South and North Vietnam.

NOVEMBER

Northern Ireland – Concessions to the Catholic minority Prime Minister Terence O’Neill announced a package of measures granting concessions to the Catholic minority in response to the protests of the Civil Rights movement.

US – Men orbit the moon DECEMBER

Apollo 8 is the first manned spacecraft to reach the Moon, orbit it, and return safely to Earth. The crew (Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders) were the first humans to see the Earth as a whole planet, orbit another celestial body and directly see the far side of the Moon.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING • Not only 1968 but the whole decade of the Sixties was an era of change in many aspects of life. The protagonists were mainly young people, who rejected social norms, racial, ethnic, and political injustices, and imposed their ideals, lifestyles and models. Groupwork Choose one of the fields of youth culture – music, fashion, cinema – that were mostly affected by change in the 1960s. Carry out research concentrating on one or more aspects and prepare a video presentation of your findings.

AI ACTIVITY

Write the script of your video presentation, then ask an AI software to write a similar script according to your prompts. Compare your production with the AI‘s one. Which one do you find is more correct and consistent?

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WOMEN THAT The last glass ceiling MADE HISTORY finally broken

AGENDA 2030

The second half of the 20th century finally saw a few women have significant roles in politics as heads of state, prime ministers and presidents of important political organisations, but as of 1 October 2024, there are only 29 countries where 30 women serve as heads of state and/ or government. At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike Sri Lanka Prime Minister In 1960, Bandaranaike was the first woman to be elected head of a government in the modern world. Her husband’s assassination in his role of Prime Minister prompted her to enter politics and she served as head of state for two terms: she nationalised many businesses and established a staterun economic system.

◀ Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike addressing the United Nations in New York, October 12th 1971.

Margaret Thatcher UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked as an industrial chemist before deciding to enter politics. As the leader of the Conservative Party, she became the nation’s first female Prime Minister. Her strong opposition to Communism gained her the nickname ‘the Iron lady’, and she served for 11 years.

◀ Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

with US President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Indira Gandhi Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi joined the movement for independence from Britain at an early age, and served as Prime Minister for more than 15 years. She was known as ‘the Iron lady‘, too, because of her strong personality. She was assassinated by her own bodyguards in 1984 in retaliation for ordering the army to attack Sikh separatists at their holy temple. ◀ Prime Minister Indira Gandhi meets Queen Elizabeth II in Dehli on November 18th, 1983.

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Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany Born and raised in East Germany, Angela Merkel entered politics soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2005 she became the country’s first female chancellor, which made her the leader of the fourth largest economy in the world. She ended her fourth term in 2021. Her service spanned the Euro-zone debt crisis, the refugee crisis, when she opened the doors of the country to Syrian refugees, and Britain’s exit from the European Union. ◀ Chancellor Angela Merkel during a press conference in 2021

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf President of Liberia Sirleaf studied in American universities and was forced into exile by the country’s long civil war, but in 2005 she became the first democratically elected female president of her country, winning support from nearly 80 percent of women voters. Her efforts were paramount in restoring the Liberian economy and in 2011 she co-earned a Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of women’s rights. ◀ President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in New York speaking at the Goalkeepers Global Goals Awards, 2017.

CHECK OUT 1 Match each person (1–5) to what she said (a–e), and explain why you think she said these words.

c When it comes to human dignity, we cannot accept compromises. d If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike

Margaret Thatcher

Indira Gandhi

Angela Merkel

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf a I was often asked the question how I functioned with an all-male Cabinet. I must say that I had no problems. They all co-operated and gave me all the support necessary. Well, I appointed my Cabinet of Ministers. b Ethnicity should enrich us; it should make us a unique people in our diversity and not be used to divide us.

e Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood will contribute to the growth of this nation and make it strong and dynamic. 2 Which leader do you find most inspiring? Why?

WEB QUEST 3 Search the web for data concerning political female participation in todays’ world, and prepare a presentation.

Ideas for your map: CHANGE

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL Literature in the UK PPT

PDF

The Cold War Age: Literature and Culture • Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber DT62 The Werewolf •P hilip Larkin DT63 Mr Bleaney •T ed Hughes DT64 The Thought Fox •H arold Pinter, The Caretaker DT65 Friends forever?

Literature in the UK With the dramatic events of the Cold War, Western writers were left with a sense of awareness of the possibility of total disaster and apocalypse on the horizon. The presence of this pessimistic attitude deeply touched British and American literature, but a new vital wave of creativity came from postcolonial literature of the former colonies and dominions of the British Empire. They developed their own national literature as the result of compromise or clash between their indigenous culture and the influence of British culture, especially in the African Continent and in India. In fiction, the break with the stream of consciousness of the Modernist novel was total, though the technique of the interior monologue remained a useful tool for the presentation of characters’ thoughts. In drama, the main elements of innovation came from the Angry Young Men ( p. 448) and the Theatre of the Absurd ( p. 447), while poetry explored new ways to escape the conventions of both Modernism and new Romanticism.

Fiction In the 1950s and 60s, innovation came from the non-realistic tradition of romance, which explores imaginary worlds, either as a form of self-defence from a pervading sense of meaninglessness and absurdity, or in search of authentic pleasure in literature and a positive view of reality. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973 p. 454) played a central role in revitalising the fantasy tradition and filling it with a positive message of hope. He created complex imaginary worlds in The Hobbit (1937), the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) and The Silmarillion (1977, posthumous), a collection of myths. In magic realism marvellous events are combined with a realistic narrative. Angela Carter (1940– 92) created a collection of subversive short stories, The Bloody Chamber (1979), characterised by a dark atmosphere and which explore femininity, sensuality and violence. William Golding’s (1911–93) Lord of the Flies (1953) revolves around the theme of innocence and corruption, and discusses the power of the limitations of civilised life to act as a deterrent against evil. Violence is an explicit theme also in A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess (1917–93). Extreme cruelty is brought to the point of sadism in the reality of youth subculture. IN ACTION Across time and space

A Song of Ice and Fire, a fantasy with dragons and others George R.R. Martin (1948), an American novelist, screenwriter and producer, has been publishing his epic fantasy, Song of Ice and Fire, since 1991, with a total of six novels so far, but the saga is not complete yet. Martin had already won a few literary prizes for his previous works of fantasy, inspired by his love for J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, when he had the idea that gave origin to the saga. The incredibly popular series Game of Thrones took its title from the first novel. The saga depicts a violent world, set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. The warring houses try to take the Iron throne, while the Others, deadly ice-giants known to the watchers of the series as the White Walkers, threaten the world. Dragons and other fantastic creatures like now extinct wolves and unicorns, mythical reptiles and sea dragons people it. The author intended his work to discuss the implications of political realism, and debates issues of loyalty, deceit and political cunning. 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is Song of Ice and Fire about? 2 What creatures people it? 3 What issues does it focus on? 446

Web quest 2 Search the web for some clips of the series Game of Thrones and the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings which present similar situations/ characters/themes, and compare them.

The Cold War Age – Literature in the UK

▲ Poster of the TV series Game of Thrones

An outstanding figure of British literature rooted in African literature was Doris Lessing (1919–2013 p. 460), who spent most of her life in Rhodesia, modern Zimbabwe. Her books cover many themes: the African country, with its nature and the problems of apartheid, the great illusion of Communism and the collapse of its ideals, and the condition of women. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing (1950), was a critique of racial politics in Rhodesia.

Poetry In the 1950s, English poetry was dominated by The Movement, a group of nine poets which included among others Philip Larkin (1922–85). They shared a common dislike of experimental poetry, whether it was neo-Romanticism or Modernist poetry, in favour of simpler poetry. The Group, a group of poets who wrote poetry for more competent readers, was against the choices of The Movement. Some of the best poets of the Fifties were individual writers not associated to any group. Ted Hughes (1930–98) explored the man-nature relationship in innovative terms while Seamus Heaney (1939–2013 p. 470) was identified as a regionalist poet writing about the rural life of his ‘Bog People’ in Ireland. A significant example of regionalist poetry was also pop poetry in Liverpool and Manchester in the 1960s, focusing on the relationship between the young and their local environment, idealism and disillusionment, and the search for identity.

Drama • The Theatre of the Absurd The term ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ was coined by Martin Esslin, a literary critic, and refers to a group of dramatists in the 1950s: the Irishman Samuel Beckett (1906–89 p. 464), the American Arthur Adamov (1908–70), the Romanian Eugène Ionesco (1912–94), the Frenchman Jean Genet (1910–86), the British Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the German Günter Grass (1927–2015), and the British Tom Stoppard (1937). The new conventions that the dramatists established – characters trapped in frustrating situations with no-way out, language deprived of its ability to communicate, a simplified structure often charged with symbolic meaning – broke from the traditional structure and language of drama. The two symmetrical acts by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952) presents the absurd condition of two tramps, or vagabonds, or clowns, keeping themselves busy while waiting on a road for a mysterious ‘Mr Godot’.

▶ Theatre representation of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco in 2012.

447

Harold Pinter’s works explore the condition of alienation and isolation by presenting characters in enclosed rooms. In The Caretaker (1960) each character desires to establish bonds of affection with the others, but each represents a thread in the balance of emotional links formed between the characters. The protagonist, Davies, a homeless old man, fails to become the caretaker, i.e., someone who takes care of a house or building. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) rewrites Hamlet from the point of view of Ros (Rosencrantz) and Guil (Guildenstern), who are presented as powerless victims losing their heads in the Great Mechanism of history, represented by Hamlet’s plotting.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

• The Angry Young Men The name ‘Angry Young Men’ became current after the staging in 1956 of the play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (1929–94). The dramatists did not form a movement, but had in common their social backgrounds (as they mostly came from lower-middle-class families), their left-wing political leaning and a deep disillusionment with the stagnation of English life. They express their anger, search for identity and frustration with the still existing social differences without any counter-arguments, or any positive suggestions. Look Back in Anger set off a revival of British drama, mainly because of its characters and the language in which it was written, shocking in its realism and violence. Jimmy Porter, the protagonist, became the spokesman for a whole generation with his angry rhetoric. Another representative member of the Angry Young Men was Arnold Wesker (1932–2016) the most politically committed of the group. His works are often set in a kitchen, which becomes a sort of microcosm of the world at large. This humble setting earned them the definition of ‘kitchensink dramas’.

MIND MAP

Literature in the UK

Fiction

romance

positive message

magic realism

Poetry

dark atmosphere – cruelty

Angela Carter

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

African reality

The Movement vs The Group

Doris Lessing

regionalist poetry

William Golding

Drama

Theatre of the Absurd

Angry Young Men

break from dramatic conventions

anger – search for identity – frustration

Eugène Ionesco – Jean Genet – Günter Grass – Samuel Beckett – Harold Pinter

John Osborne – Arnold Wesker

pop poetry

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 What new conventions did they establish?

1 What forms of fiction developed in the UK, and who were the main representatives?

4 Who were the main representatives of The Movement?

2 Who were the main representatives of the Theatre of the Absurd?

6 Which is the most important work for this group?

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The Cold War Age – Literature in the UK

5 What features did the Angry Young Men share?

Ideas for your map: ROMANCE/MAGIC REALISM

p. 495

Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL Literature in the USA PDF

• Jerome David Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye DT66 Name something you’d like to be • Sylvia Plath, Ariel Collection DT67 Daddy • Anne Sexton DT68 Ringing the Bells • Allen Ginsberg DT69 Howl The sci-fi heritage • Philip K, Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? DT70 Human or non-human? • Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 DT71 The Book People

The Beat Generation The Beat Generation of poets and novelists dominated American life and literature from the 1940s to the 1960s. Its members were rebels against the Establishment and the dominant ethos of American life, characterised by conformism, materialism and narrow-minded morality. Allen Ginsberg (1926–97), William S. Burroughs (1914–97) and Jack Kerouac (1922–69 p. 474) were among the best-known representatives of the Beat Generation. The expression ‘Beat Generation‘ was coined by Kerouac to describe how they felt ‘beat down‘, defeated and out of place, but later it acquired other meanings. The Beats used mystical cults, drugs and free sex to expand their experience, and gave rise to an American counterculture. Forms of counterculture were also to be found in music, with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and the black counterculture.

Black counterculture and Southern Gothic After World War II, black prose was mostly dedicated to the struggle for Civil Rights. It later developed into the New Afro-American Renaissance. In the ‘novel of memory’ black writers looked for their own roots in America itself, contrasting the rural South with the urban North. The most important African-American women are Alice Walker (1944 p. 482) with her novel The Color Purple (1982) about Celie, a poor 14-year-old Afro-American girl living in Georgia in the early 1900s, and how she managed to build herself a happy life and find her lost sister and children. One of the most important short-story writers in the tradition of the Southern Gothic was Flannery O’Connor (1925–64 p. 478), whose Complete Stories (published posthumously in 1965) revealed her gift at presenting grotesque situations, often filled with violence, and sardonic in tone.

Science fiction Science fiction came to prominence with the works of Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), Isaac Asimov (1920–92) and Philip K. Dick (1928–82). Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a dystopian novel that explores the themes of censorship and conformity in the era of McCarthyism and the advent of television in all family homes in the 1950s. Asimov’s most famous works are the Robot and the Foundation Series. In the Robot Series, he considered the themes of technology and how man can control it, and of non-human life as capable of evolving into humanity. Philip K. Dick’s works explore complex themes of identity in bleak imaginary realities. One of his novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was adapted into the blockbuster film Blade Runner (1982 p. 347).

◀ Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old AfricanAmerican girl, on her way to William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white public school, on November 14, 1960, during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis. Because of threats of violence against her, she is escorted by four deputy US marshals.

▲ Will Smith in the 2004 film I, Robot, freely inspired by Asimov’s three laws of robotics.

449

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Jewish writers An important contribution to the tradition of the novel came from the American Jewish community. The first important member of this group was Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010), whose The Catcher in the Rye (1951) presented Holden Caulfield’s troubled life at school and difficult relationships with other teenagers and adults. The novel narrates the growth of the character in a modern and sometimes sarcastic interpretation of the Bildungsroman.

Poetry from the 1950s to the 1970s There were several groups of poets at work in the 1950s. The Confessional Group included those poets who focused on extreme moments of individual experience and personal trauma, including previously taboo matters such as mental illness, suffering and even the sensitive theme of suicide. Robert Lowell (1917–77) reflected on his New England roots, the events of WWII, and religious themes in the collection Lord Weary’s Castle. Anne Sexton (1928–74) and Sylvia Plath (1932–63) revealed an intense sensibility and a fascination with madness and suicide deeply connected with their personal experiences. The Idiosyncratic Group included poets interested in experimentation; Elizabeth Bishop (1911–79) wrote intensively about her many travels and the enriching contact with Latin American culture and literature. The Beat Generation was a movement that arose in the 1950s, first in San Francisco and then in New York, and involved both novelists and poets. This group of socially committed authors used free verse in original visual layouts for their poems. Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) denounced in his poem Howl (1956) capitalism and conformity as forces leading America towards its decline and final destruction. MIND MAP

Beat Generation

new AfroAmerican Renaissance

rebels against Establishment

novel of memory

counterculture

Alice Walker

Literature in the USA

science fiction

Jewish writers

Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury

Jerome David Salinger

poetry in the 1950s–70s

The Confessional Group

The Idiosyncratic Group

Beat poets – social commitment

Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath

Elizabeth Bishop

Allen Ginsberg

▶ Allen Ginsberg during a poetry

reading at the Albert Memorial, London, on June 11, 1965.

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 How did the Beat Generation relate to the Establishment? 2 What did the writers of the black counterculture focus on? 3 What tradition does Flannery O’Connor’s works belong to? 4 Who were the three main representatives of science fiction? 5 What kind of novel is Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye?

450

The Cold War Age – Literature in the USA

Ideas for your map: REBELLION

p. 495

Literature in English LEARNING DIGITAL Literature in English

PDF

• Nadine Gordimer, July’s People DT72 We are all prejudiced • Kamala Das, The Descendants DT73 The White Flowers • Vidladhar S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas DT74 The new house • Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades (Boys and Girls) DT75 Flora • Patrick White, Voss DT76 Voss’ death

Literature in English includes literature from all those nations where a sense of national identity emerged in association with the use of English as a mode of expression. This includes Canada, which began to develop its own national literature in English only in the 20th century, with the outstanding example of Alice Munro (1931–2024), the master of the contemporary short story, and Margaret Atwood (1939 p. 534) with her dystopian novels; Australia, which first emerged on the international scene with Patrick White (1912–90), the first Australian novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novel Voss (1957) introduces the reader to a mystical world where the Aboriginal‘s and the settlers’ imaginary worlds are presented as developing along parallel lines in the search for the real nature of man. However, most literature in English is connected with postcolonial countries and their independence: ‘The Empire writes back to the Centre‘, as the Indian writer Salman Rushdie brilliantly summarised in his attempt to describe postcolonial literature. Literature in English emerged in the African Continent (with the separate reality of South Africa and its apartheid), India and the Caribbean.

Literature of the African Continent

▲ Alice Munro

English-language literature in Africa started developing around the 1950s and 1960s, at the end of colonialism although at the cost of terrible conflicts (war in Algeria, 1954–62; the secession of Katanga from Zaire, 1961–63; the civil war between Nigeria and Biafra, 1966–70). African writers dug deep into their historical roots, often using a stepmother tongue or Pidgin English, i.e. English modified with local variations. Other common traits are the importance of oral tradition and the role played by the writer, regarded as the mouthpiece of a people and usually politically committed. Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), a Nigerian novelist, felt that his duty was to restore dignity to his own people through social commitment and that ‘any good story, any good novel, should have a message, a purpose‘ since ‘art is, and always was, at the service of man‘. His most important themes were the destruction of the old values and traditions brought about by the arrival of the Europeans, and the corruption and inefficiency of Nigerian society. His best-known works include Things Fall Apart (1958) and Anthills of the Savannah (1988). Wole Soyinka (1934 p. 486), also from Nigeria, is a poet and playwright. His theatre is often defined as ‘total theatre’, i.e. a kind of theatre which incorporates into the work elements drawn from his own Yoruba culture, such as dance, mimicry and music. It also shows the influence of modern European drama. His plots are strong and intriguing and the narration often takes inspiration from his native Yoruba speech, also marked by puns, witty wordplay, allusions and references. This favours the ironic and satirical viewpoint of certain scenes, as happens in The Lion and the Jewel (1962), besides the usual themes common to other African writers such as daily life, corruption, black or white oppression, clash of cultures and the break from precolonial reality. The years of apartheid deeply marked South African writers, whose main themes are the relationship between races, the issue of violence and the right (or not) of white writers to speak for the blacks. South African writers developed their distinctive literature in many African languages as well as Afrikaans (a vernacular derived from Dutch) and English. Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) in July’s People (1981) explores the issue of the relationship between whites and blacks by imagining the end of apartheid and the hostility towards whites with a reversal of attitudes which show how weak the sense of national identity was. 451

IN ACTION Look and think

◀ President Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar during the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final, in Johannesburg, South Africa. South Africa won the World Cup in 1955, with an almost all white team. Mandela had just been elected President of South Africa with a landslide victory in the first political elections where non-white citizens were also allowed to vote.

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is Pienaar holding? 2 What is Mandela doing? 3 What atmosphere does the picture have? 4 Search the web for the same scene from Invictus, the 2009 film by Clint Eastwood celebrating the effort of Mandela to bring all citizens, black and white, together and so stop fighting and violence. How truthful is the film scene?

Like other South African authors in the post-apartheid world, she had to redefine her subjects. In The Pickup (2001), she shows the reality of migration from poor Eastern countries to newly democratic South Africa which, through Western-like capitalism and industrialisation, has become a kind of ‘promised land’ for people without hope. John Maxwell Coetzee (1940 p. 490) describes to great effect what it was to be white and conscious in the face of apartheid’s stupidities and cruelties although apartheid is never explicitly mentioned in his novels and the settings are not necessarily South African. His best-known work, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), describes an imaginary Empire, set in an unspecified place and time where a Magistrate confronts the aggressive reality of colonialism.

Literature of India English-language literature in India began to flourish fully by the middle of the 1930s, after the country gained its independence. Writers focused on the reality of India: poverty, injustice, the caste system, Hinduism and Islam and their cultural traditions, and the violent and religious extremism which accompanied independence. Salman Rushdie (1947) wrote in 1981 Midnight’s Children, a complex and intriguing novel which spans three generations, covering the history of India from 1915 to 1977, i.e. from the time of the Empire to independence and afterwards. The incredible variety of dialects, religions and ethnic groups in the large Indian subcontinent is reflected in the choice of some writers to write in both their native language and in English, as happens with Kamala Das (1934–2009). Her confessional poetry reveals not only her personal struggle with the reality of forced marriage, but also the condition of women, still confined to their homes and duties in a patriarchal society.

Literature of the Caribbean The term ‘Caribbean’ refers to the area of tropical islands between North and South America, divided into the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, which today contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and the Lesser Antilles (the Leeward and Windward Islands). The islands have a multi-ethnic character, the result of the massive moving of slaves from the West Coast of Africa to the tobacco plantations, and a multi-cultural background, the result of colonialism by various European powers. Most writers deal with the Caribbean exuberant nature, slavery, uprootedness and (sometimes ‘double’) otherness, due to the interaction of original cultures (Indian, African), acquired cultures (usually European or American) and local cultures (the Caribbean one). Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932–2018) was influenced by three worlds; the Caribbean, the English and the Indian, as he was born in India. Fairly pessimistic about the postcolonial world, he refused to place the blame for its condition entirely on the old colonial system. A House for Mr Biswas (1961) presents a satirical view of both Caribbean life and imperialist commercial Western society. 452

The Cold War Age – Literature in English

MIND MAP

Literature in English

Literature of the African Continent

historical roots

stepmother tongue – Pidgin English

social commitment

poverty – caste system – religions

Chinua Achebe – Wole Soyinka Nigerian society

1 Answer the questions. 1 When did literature in English start to develop in Africa, and how did it relate to British and native cultures and languages? 2 Which writers denounced the condition of apartheid in South Africa? 3 When did Indian literature in English develop, and who is the most representative writer?

confessional poetry – Kamala Das

Greater and Lesser Antilles

multi-ethnic character

nature – slavery – uprootedness

Vidiadhar S. Naipaul

Salman Rushdie

Nadine Gordimer apartheid – relationships between races CHECK OUT

Literature of the Caribbean

Literature of India

the Caribbean – the English – the Indians

John M. Coetzee apartheid

INVALSI

2 83 LISTEN to a Caribbean explaining what you can find in the islands. Complete the sentences with the five correct endings from the options A – H. There are two extra letters which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0). 0 The Caribbean offers great biodiversity

A high expectations concerning education and income. B and a rich cultural environment.

1 The steelpan is the only

C and work remotely in the islands.

2 Air quality is extremely high

D due to the almost total absence of polluting industries.

3 It is getting easier to live

E in the islands if you have an American passport.

4 Foreigners working remotely 5 Digital nomads tend to have

F high educational levels and incomes. G new musical instrument of the 20th century. H can get a passport in some islands.

4 What common features do the Caribbean islands share? 5 What themes can be identified in the works of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul?

Ideas for your map: IDENTITY/COLONIALISM

p. 495

453

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK FICTION LEARNING DIGITAL J ohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings PDF

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)

The Lord of the Rings: full plot

Profile J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, i.e. Old English, and also a brilliant philologist who gained worldwide reputation as an author of romances and fantasy novels with adventures and magic beings which Tolkien intended as new myths. Tolkien firmly believed that myths have moral and spiritual value. Although he objected to obvious religious allegory in stories, for him fantasy and myth reflect a deeper truth, as the fantasy stories show that man is a sub-creator capable of imitating God’s creative act. Tolkien soon demonstrated his love and talent for philology and began to create his own languages, creatively devised on the basis of his philological studies, but incredibly precise and articulated. He started writing novels to provide his languages with a real world; some of the lighter stories were also written for his own children. He read out and discussed his works in progress with his Inklings friends while chatting together. His greatest friend in the group was Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963), a British academic and the author of The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, the last of which were two allegories of the Christian faith. Tolkien’s books have been translated into 50 languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide; The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have been adapted into Oscar winning films with millions of fans. Tolkien kept working on The Silmarillion, a collection of myths and legends, without ever giving it its final form, until his death in 1973.

The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) Written over twelve years, The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy romance about the battle not to dominate, but to destroy the most powerful weapon, the ‘One Ring, and its Creator with it, Sauron ‘The Eye’‘. Frodo’s journey to destroy the Ring is set in MiddleEarth and among its inhabitants are the Elves, the Dwarves, the Orcs, the Ents, the Men and the surprising reality of the Hobbits. These Hobbits, Half-Men from the Squire, become the protagonists of an epic adventure that will bring the most sedentary race in Middle-Earth to see all the realms and reach Mordor, the land of total desolation where the Eye of Sauron, the Dark Lord, lives. The work is divided into three books: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. 454

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1892 J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa.

1895 His father died and his mother took the family back to England. The family converted to Roman Catholicism.

1904 His mother died. Tolkien attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham and Exeter College, Oxford.

1908 Tolkien fell in love with Edith Bratt and married her when he was 21.

1914–18 KEY FACT He fought in the Battle of the Somme during WWI.

1920–25 KEY FACT He was a university professor of English language and literature at Leeds. 1936

WORKS

1925–59 KEY FACT He was a professor for the same subjects at Oxford, where he started The Inklings, a group of friends and fellow writers.

The Monsters and the Critics

1937

The Hobbit

1954–55

The Lord of the Rings p. 454

1977

The Silmarillion (posthumous)

THE PLOT When the eccentric hobbit Bilbo Baggins leaves his home in the Shire, he gives his heir Frodo a magic ring. Some years later, the wizard Gandalf discovers this and reveals to Frodo that the Ring is in reality the One Ring that controls a lot of other rings of power dispersed among the races of Middle-Earth (three to the Elves, seven to the Dwarves, and nine to the Men). Sauron, a mysterious power who has sought for millennia to control all the inhabitants of Middle-Earth, is now looking for the Ring from his fortress in Mordor. Frodo sets off with the Fellowship of the Ring and its nine members – Frodo himself, the hobbits Merry, Pippin (his cousins) and Sam (Frodo‘s gardener and dearest friend), the wizard Gandalf, Aragorn, who is the rightful heir of the throne of Gondor, Gimly the dwarf, Legolas the Elf and Boromir, a man from Gondor – to go to Mordor, Sauron’s country, and destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. On

the long difficult journey, Frodo is accompanied by Sam and Gollum, a degenerate being that used to be a Ring-bearer, while the other characters of the Fellowship are engaged in heroic fights against Saruman, a wizard who has chosen to ally himself with Sauron. Frodo manages to reach the Cracks of Doom, the furnace where the Ring can be destroyed. Near the fire, he falls victim to the power of the Ring and claims it is his. Gollum struggles with Frodo for the Ring, grabs it, and then falls into the furnace. The Ring is destroyed and Frodo and Sam are greeted with all honours in Minas Tirith, the city of Gondor, whose king is now Aragorn. The Hobbits go back to the Shire, where they still have to fight to restore peace and order. Years later Frodo, permanently damaged by his experiences with the Ring, leaves with the Elves for the Undying Lands, while Sam remains in the Shire.

Themes • The reversed quest and the Ring The quest is reversed because Frodo is not looking for a token (a sword, a cup, a talisman) which can help the people of Middle Earth to win the war. He intends to destroy the One Ring, the enemy’s most powerful weapon, following the advice of Elrond, the Elvish king. The Ring makes the person who wears it invisible and live longer, but also consumes his body and spirit. A source of temptation for all creatures, it is the evil that corrupts all and the only right way to use it is to destroy it. Tolkien had lived through two World Wars, the bombing of civilians, concentration camps and genocide, and the development and use of chemical and nuclear weapons. If the ability of humans to produce that kind of evil could somehow be destroyed, even at the cost of sacrificing something, this is worth doing.

• Good and evil Tolkien aims to show that, although the notions of good and evil are clear, even ‘good’ people can be capable of evil. Saruman, the White Wizard and the greatest of the wizards, sides with Sauron. Frodo himself, the Ring-bearer, is broken in the end by the power of the One Ring. If it weren’t for Gollum and his accidental fall, all would have been lost. The only character that is totally evil is Sauron, ‘the Eye’ totally deprived of any sign of humanity.

• Free will and humility The multiplicity of characters and intertwined plots makes it clear that everyone is called to play their part in the story, and any choice has a critical influence on current or future events. The smallest actions of the simplest individuals have a fundamental role in the great design of the story. Frodo is not chosen as the elect; in the silence of the Great Council, he freely and spontaneously offers to take the Ring to Mordor, and his decision causes the members of the Fellowship of the Ring to come together despite their differences. Similarly, Sam Wise Gangee should not be part of the story, but his friendship with Frodo makes him choose to follow Frodo 455

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK FICTION IN ACTION

until the end. Aragorn and Gandalf are certainly examples of courage and wisdom, but they humbly use their lives and qualities to serve Frodo in his reversed quest. Pippin and Merry join the Fellowship apparently only to be captured by the orcs but if it weren’t for that they would not meet Treebeard, the great Ent, and the Ents would not go to war and defeat Saruman.

Look and think

• The war The horrors Tolkien experienced at the front in WWI are reflected in this epic saga of Middle Earth. Although the novel is filled with battles of epic dimensions, war is never glorified. War brings death with it and it is only acceptable to defend what is good and right in the world, as Sam says as he tries to help an exhausted Frodo to continue with his quest.

• Loss, mortality and heroism

▲ The north door of St Edward’s church with two ancient yew trees growing either side, Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire.

▲ Tolkien’s Doors of Durin in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf opened them saying ‘Mellon’, the elvish word for ‘friend’, and the Fellowship entered the caves of Moria.

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is the Door of Durin like? 2 What is the north door of St Edward’s church like? How similar is it to the door drawn by Tolkien? 3 Legend says that Tolkien visited the church, and now it is commonly known as Tolkien’s door: how convincing is the legend in your opinion?

MIND MAP

Style and tone Tolkien produced hundreds of drawings and maps for his works. They made his stories more realistic and helped him to keep track of thousands of years of history, geographies and complex languages. The names of places are carefully chosen, and he gives each character their own style. Galadriel, the Elf queen, speaks formally with carefully chosen words, while the Hobbits use colloquial, homely language, and the Ents, the oldest creatures on Earth, use very long words.

J.R.R. Tolkien

professor – philologist – author of romances

invention of languages and worlds

The novel is dominated by a sense of loss: beauty and joy fail and disappear, victory is possible, but only temporary. Frodo is never fully healed from the wounds he received, either physically or spiritually, as a Ring-bearer. This sense of loss, which is borrowed from the Nordic world, is neither tragic nor desperate, but rather sad and elegiac. It is the consciousness of the fragility of all things and their mortality. It enhances the efforts of the protagonists to fight the darkness and gives them heroic qualities.

The Lord of the Rings

three books

reversed quest

good and evil

destruction of the One Ring

The Eye – total evil

free will – humility

roles of small individuals

war – horrors of WWI

service offered by and to Frodo, the Ring-bearer

loss – mortality – heroism

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

3 What races are there in Middle-Earth?

1 What were Tolkien’s main interests?

4 What are the main themes of The Lord of the Rings?

2 What was his view of myth?

5 How does Tolkien vary language in the novel?

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Ideas for your map: ROMANCE

p. 495

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

T76 The power of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

After Bilbo Baggins gave his Ring as a present to Frodo at his farewell birthday party, Frodo has kept it on a chain in a pocket for many years. Gandalf comes to visit Frodo as he believes it is time to see whether this Ring is indeed the master of all rings. He asks Frodo to give it to him for a moment.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. fire • One Ring • letters • passes • heavier • recover • dark

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Frodo gives the Ring to Gandalf, who throws it into the (1)

. He makes the room

(2)

and then takes it out of the fire. He holds it in the palm of his hand, then

(3)

it to Frodo, who realises that the Ring is not hot as it should be, and seems

(4)

. Gandalf orders Frodo to hold it up, and he can see that some (5)

are now visible on it. Gandalf tells Frodo what the words mean in the Common Language, and that this is the (6)

, which Sauron intends to (7)

at all costs.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Scene from the 2002 film version of the first book of The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring), directed by Peter Jackson.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Where does Frodo keep the Ring?

2 What is the Ring like?

3 What is strange about the Ring?

Frodo took it from his breeches-pocket, where it was clasped to a chain that hung from his belt. He unfastened it and handed it slowly to the wizard. It felt suddenly very heavy, as if either it or Frodo himself was in some way reluctant for Gandalf to touch it. Gandalf held it up. It looked to be made of pure and solid gold. ‘Can you see any markings1 5 on it?’ he asked. ‘No,’ said Frodo. ‘There are none. It is quite plain, and it never shows a scratch or sign of wear2.’ ‘Well then, look!’ To Frodo’s astonishment and distress3 the wizard threw it suddenly into the middle of a glowing corner of the fire. Frodo gave a cry and groped for the tongs4; but 10 Gandalf held him back. ‘Wait!’ he said in a commanding voice, giving Frodo a quick look from under his bristling brows. No apparent change came over the ring. After a while Gandalf got up, closed the shutters5 outside the window, and drew the curtains. The room became dark and silent, though the clack of Sam’s shears6, now nearer to the windows, could still be heard faintly from the 15 garden. For a moment the wizard stood looking at the fire; then he stooped and removed the ring to the hearth with the tongs, and at once picked it up. Frodo gasped7. ‘It is quite cool,’ said Gandalf. ‘Take it!’ Frodo received it on his shrinking palm: it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than ever. 20 ‘Hold it up!’ said Gandalf. ‘And look closely!’ 1 markings: segni 2 scratch… wear: graffi o segni di usura

3 distress: angoscia 4 groped for the tongs: cercò di prendere le molle

5 shutters: imposte 6 clack… shears: il rumore delle forbici da giardino di Sam 7 gasped: sussultò

457

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK FICTION

4 What language are the lines written in?

As Frodo did so, he now saw fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside: lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script. They shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth.

‘I cannot read the fiery8 letters,’ said Frodo in a quavering9 voice. ‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language 25 is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough: One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

5 What are the two lines part of?

It is only two lines of a verse long known in Elven-lore:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die10, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.’

6 How does Frodo feel?

He paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: ‘This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his 40 power. He greatly desires it – but he must not get it.’ Frodo sat silent and motionless. Fear seemed to stretch out a vast hand, like a dark cloud rising in the East and looming up to engulf him11. (From Vol. 1, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2)

8 fiery: ardenti 9 quavering: tremolante

458

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

10 doomed to die: destinati a morire

11 looming… him: che si profilava all’orizzonte per inghiottirlo

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What do Frodo’s reactions to Gandalf’s investigation of the Ring show about his relationship with the Ring? 2 What does the Ring’s change in weight and shape convey? Choose all the correct options. a

I t is getting more powerful and menacing.

It reveals its real nature.

I t shows Frodo is confused and hallucinating.

3 What is the sense of the ancient song? 4 What metaphor is used to represent fear? INTERPRET 4 Frodo realises for the first time the terrible influence the Ring has on him. Does he panic?

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Your text explained

▲ A scene from the 2002 film version of the novel with Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Frodo (Elijah Wood).

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A Japanese-influenced fantasy brimming with adventures and demons

A Thousand Steps into Night (2022) by Traci Chee Traci Chee is a 4th-generation Japanese American author of YA fiction. She loves literature, art, and poetry, but she has other unusual hobbies including paper crafts, bonsai gardening and egg painting. Her first book, The Reader, came out after she graduated from San Francisco State University, and is part of her best-known trilogy, The Sea of Ink and Gold. A Thousand Steps into Night is her fifth book, which shows several Japanesefantasy influences.

Miuko is an ordinary girl who lives an uneventful life as the daughter of an innkeeper. Although she has never been interested in adventure, she is hit with a curse that turns her into a demon with a deadly touch. She sets off on a quest to reverse the curse and get back to her ordinary life, but along the way she realises the transformation has given her incredible power and freedom. She will then have to choose between going back into her past safe, quiet life, which no longer fits her, or living a new life as her true self.

“

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Amanda’s review of the book and discuss the following statements. • Challenging situations are the only ones that help you grow. • Fantasy books are so popular with young adults because they need to escape reality.

I think you have been taught that greatness does not belong to you, and that to want it is perverse. I think you have folded yourself into the shape that others expect of you; but that shape does not suit you, has never suited you, and all your young life, you have been dying to be free of it.

• A safe, comfortable life is definitely more desirable for a woman than a life of adventures which could get you into trouble or make you suffer.

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

• Sometimes if you want to be your true self you must give up being what people around you expect you to be. 459

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK FICTION

Doris Lessing (1919–2013)

LEARNING DIGITAL D oris Lessing and The Grass Is Singing PPT

Doris Lessing

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The Grass Is Singing: full plot

Profile Doris Lessing was convinced that it was a writer’s duty to consider the issues of her time. She fought against any kind of inequality. Lessing’s first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was a shocking novelty as she presented the reality of interracial relationships through the case of a white woman murdered by a black servant. In South Rhodesia she was condemned for publicly questioning the colour bar. She is also considered a feminist writer as her novels, short stories, essays and autobiographical works describe the condition of women, their rights and the need for their total emancipation.

Themes Doris Lessing was a very prolific writer and her books cover many themes, such as: • Africa, either the wonderful beauty of its nature or the complex reality of the politics of white people, racial discrimination and the problem of apartheid; • environmental risks: nuclear energy, pollution and destruction of the natural world; • the difficulty of interpersonal relations between parents and children, husband and wife; • the condition of women and their difficulties in family life, in politics, in the free expression of their intellectual faculties. Lessing’s novels helped women to recognise and reject oppressive gender roles. In The Golden Notebook the protagonists, Anna and Molly, are aware of the social pressures and attitudes that limit their potential as women and that, because they are unmarried, men see them as sexual objects, ‘free’ for the taking. Their decision to live as single mothers is evidence of their recognition that women’s freedom should be the result of a transformation in gender relations.

The Grass Is Singing (1950) The novel depicts the South Rhodesian white community, with the Britishers, the Afrikaners (a much smaller community of limited means) and the native community. It centres on Mary and Dick Turner, a Britisher couple attempting to become a part of rural African life, and Moses, a black servant, who becomes dominant over the European Mary, manipulating her fears and love of him until in the end he destroys her.

Characters • Mary Turner Mary is a blue-eyed, delicate woman, but has a strong-willed, independent personality. She marries Dick Turner as a result of social pressure, but hates the rural life that her marriage imposes on her. She has a romantic view of nature, but the South African veld appears to her inhospitable and frightening in its unknowability. She finds sex repulsive. A negative aspect of her personality is her intense racism, which contrasts with her fascination with native people, and particularly with Moses. 460

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LIFE 1919 Doris Lessing (born Doris May Tayler) was born to British parents in Persia (now Iran). Her pen name comes from her second husband Gottfried Lessing.

1925 The family moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

1926 Doris was sent to a Roman Catholic convent school, and later to Salisbury High School for Girls.

1938 KEY FACT She worked in the Rhodesian Parliament for the non-racist left-wing party.

1943 She joined a Communist group. She married twice and had three children from her two husbands.

1949 Disillusioned with Communism and political activism, she moved to London with her youngest son. 1950

1956 KEY FACT She was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa because of her direct opposition to apartheid and her left-wing opinions.

The Grass Is Singing p. 460

WORKS

1952

Martha Quest

1962

The Golden Notebook

2007 KEY FACT She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1973

Collected African Stories

1983

The Diaries of Jane Somers

2001

The Sweetest Dream

2008

Alfred and Emily

IN ACTION

• Dick Turner

Key words

Dick trains as a veterinarian but he is a rather unsuccessful farmer because of his poor decisions and weak personality. Towards the end of the novel, he is often sick, a physical manifestation of his weak will, and goes mad after Mary is murdered.

1 Match each word/ expression (1–5) to the correct definition (a–e). 1

colour bar

Britishers

Afrikaners

natives

racial divide

a the black community of Africa b the descendants of British colonists c black and other non-white people do not have the same rights, opportunities, and facilities as white people. d a de facto segregation of a group though not established by law e the descendants of Dutch colonists from South Africa

• Moses Moses is a native man educated in a missionary school. He has a large, muscular physique. His personality remains mysterious, especially in his relationship with Mary, who treats him cruelly at first and then becomes dependent on him. He may feel a strong desire for revenge against the white woman, but his motivation for murdering her remains uninvestigated in the novel.

THE PLOT The novel moves in flashback to Mary’s early life and then her decision to marry Dick Turner. Dick refuses to have a child as they are too poor and they lead a solitary life in their condition of ‘poor whites’. Mary hates the natives and obliges them to work harder. She whips Moses in the face because he has dared to ask her for a break from work. Later, he becomes a servant in the house. Years pass, the couple get older and weaker. Mary often gets depressed and grows fond of Moses. Charlie Slatter, her neighbour, is disgusted by her attitude. He persuades Dick to go on holiday with Mary and, on their return, Dick agrees that Tony Marston, a young public school man hired by Slatter, will run the farm. Mary, now severely mentally incapacitated, predicts that Moses will kill her and is subsequently found murdered. Moses confesses to the killing.

Themes • The racial divide and the white superiority myth The novel depicts the farm system and the way the white farmer exploits his African labourers. The racial divide and the myth of white superiority dominate the relationship between the two groups. Charlie Slatter and the investigating officer want to throw a veil of silence over Mary’s murder as it is obvious that Mary had an intimate relationship with Moses, maybe even a sexual one. She has therefore violated the unwritten code of the colour bar that separates blacks from whites. Dick is criticised, too, for occasionally being too friendly to some of his black workers, when he is expected to discipline them with an iron fist.

◀ Anti-apartheid demonstrators gathered at Rhodesia House in protest to the British Government’s dealings with Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), 18th November 1971.

Ideas for your map: RACISM/FEMINISM

p. 495

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK FICTION

• Women and marriage Lessing traces the limitations of women’s upbringing in a society where they are expected to contribute as companions to their husband’s social role. Mary and Dick are sexually and intellectually incompatible but only have each other for company because the town and the neighbours are all very far away. Mary takes out her frustrations on the Africans working on the farm and, in her solitude, she finally admits Moses into her home, which will lead to her end.

MIND MAP

feminist writer

women’s condition

Doris Lessing

interracial relationships

environmental risks

Mary Turner – white woman

The Grass Is Singing

Moses – black man

racist

mysterious – muscular

fascinated with nature

desire of revenge

racial divide

white superiority myth

women’s limitations

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What main ideas shaped Lessing’s personality as a writer?

3 Who are the three main characters in The Grass Is Singing?

2 What themes did she present in her novels?

4 What themes are present in The Grass Is Singing?

T77 The ‘poor whites’

The Grass Is Singing

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

The Turners are presented from the point of view of their status and their relationship with the Britishers. They fail to be part of this group from the starting point of Mary’s shameful relationship with Moses and her murder.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. shameful • murder • Afrikaners • negatively • ‘poor whites’ • criticised

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The Turners are (1)

for staying on their own, and it is believed that they do not spend

time with their neighbours because they hide some (2) (3)

comment on the state of the Turners’ house, more similar to the houses of an

Afrikaner. The Turners are called the (4) (5)

Now read the extract and check your answers.

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

, and this was a term of shame because only

, not the Britishers, were called that way. However, Mary’s (6)

some sympathise with Dick.

462

secret. The neighbours also

makes

Doris Lessing UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 How are the Turners called?

2 Who are the natives?

3 Do people divide in groups because of their wealth or their race?

4 What do the Turners not identify with?

Long before the murder marked them out1, people spoke of the Turners in the hard, careless voices reserved for misfits, outlaws, and the self-exiled. The Turners were disliked, though few of their neighbours had ever met them, or even seen them in the distance. Yet what was there to dislike? They simply ‘kept themselves to themselves’; that was all. They were never seen at district dances, or fêtes, or gymkhanas2. They must have had something to be ashamed 5 of; that was the feeling. It was not right to seclude themselves like that; it was a slap in the face3 of everyone else; what had they got to be so stuck-up about? What, indeed! Living the way they did! That little box of a house – it was forgivable as a temporary dwelling, but not to live in permanently. Why, some natives (though not many, thank heavens) had houses as 10 good; and it would give them a bad impression to see white people living in such a way. And then it was that someone used the phrase ‘poor whites’. It caused disquiet. There was no great money-cleavage4 in those days (that was before the era of the tobacco barons5), but there was certainly a race division. The small community of Afrikaners had their own lives, and the Britishers ignored them. ‘Poor whites’ were Afrikaners, never British. But the person who said the Turners were poor whites stuck to it defiantly. What was the difference? What 15 was a poor white? It was the way one lived, a question of standards. All the Turners needed were a drove6 of children to make them poor whites. Though the arguments were unanswerable, people would still not think of them as poor whites. To do that would be letting the side down7. The Turners were British, after all. Thus the district handled the Turners, in accordance with that esprit de corps which is the first rule 20 of South African society, but which the Turners themselves ignored. They apparently did not recognize the need for esprit de corps; that, really, was why they were hated. The more one thinks about it, the more extraordinary the case becomes. Not the murder itself; but the way people felt about it, the way they pitied Dick Turner with a fine fierce indignation against Mary, as if she were something unpleasant and unclean, and it served her 25 right8 to get murdered. But they did not ask questions.

1 marked them out: li distinguesse 2 gymkhanas: gincane 3 slap in the face: offesa 4 money-cleavage: differenza economica

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 The feelings of the white community of Britishers were particularly strong against Mary. Why? 2 What topic was covered by a conspiracy of silence among the Britishers, and why? 3 The narrator uses free indirect speech so as to

5 Il tabacco era una delle principali attività produttive della Rhodesia. 6 drove: nidiata

7 letting the side down: imbarazzare/deludere 8 served her right: se l’era meritato

INTERPRET 4 The narrator describes interracial relationships with objective neutrality. Is her choice effective in her intention to reveal the racial divisions as groundless in your opinion? DEBATE 5 Debate the statement in groups.

side with the Turners against the Britishers.

You should stay with those who are like you.

reveal the racist attitude of the Britishers.

Group A claim that you can live better if you remain with your people.

openly condemn the isolation of the Turners.

Group B claim that life becomes better if you have contact with people outside your group.

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Your text explained

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463

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK DRAMA

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

LEARNING DIGITAL S amuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot PPT

Samuel Beckett

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Waiting for Godot: full plot

Existentialism: a philosophy that starts from the existence, i.e. the experience, of man and his ‘existential angst’. The main representatives were Søren Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger.

Profile Samuel Beckett’s works reflect through allusions his interest in many authors, among whom Dante, René Descartes, and James Joyce ( p. 360). His plays present a meaningless life marked by boredom, repetition, uncertainty, alienation and incommunicability as typical of the Theatre of the Absurd ( p. 447). He renewed the language and structure of drama, where language becomes a barrier to communication. In his works, which are also influenced by Existentialism, Beckett tries to consider the basic questions concerning human life and its meaning. Beckett was essentially a comic writer who made a farce of the uselessness of most human efforts. Following the play, the viewer becomes free of futile feelings and emotions, in a cathartic process typical of drama. In his career, Beckett moved towards greater concentration and brevity. His final plays often consist of only one act, with one character. In Krapp’s Last Tape (a one-act play) an old man listens to the confessions he recorded in earlier and happier years. To the old Krapp the voice of the younger Krapp is that of a total stranger, an image of the mystery of the self.

Waiting for Godot (1952) The play presents two vagabonds on an empty road, and abolishes all realistic conventions of character, plot and language. All their futile occupations just fill the empty time of their waiting. They are so similar that Didi and Gogo hardly remember anything of their past and live in a sort of void. Their time is full of ‘occupations’ but none relates to Godot or is useful to make him arrive. They fill time but give it no meaning, because their time would only be ‘saved’ if he came.

Characters Beckett’s characters are very similar to clowns. Vladimir and Estragon wear baggy coats, bowler hats and boots, and the play is also full of comic scenes, mostly taken from the tradition of comic duos such as the celebrated pair of Laurel and Hardy. There are a lot of practical jokes, such as the game of hats and boots between Vladimir and Estragon, Estragon’s trousers falling down, various physical assaults, and Pozzo being led by a rope. Didi and Gogo are psychologically and dramatically complementary while being opposites. Didi is intellectual, more determined and struggles with his weak memory, while Gogo is instinctive, passive and forgetful. Pozzo and Lucky are more clearly allegorical, as Pozzo leads Lucky, who carries his bags, by a rope and gives him orders. Their transformation in Act 2, where Pozzo goes blind and Lucky delivers a long meaningless monologue modelled on Joyce’s stream of consciousness ( p. 360), may suggest that they represent exploitation of the masses and then the masses’ rebellion, or more simply any human act of exploitation of a weaker being, and the inevitable fall of the master into degradation.

Structure and themes This tragicomedy (as Beckett defined it in his own English translation, as the play was originally written in French) is made up of two acts that are like two concentric circles where the actions, the dialogues, etc. are always the same, though with slight variations. Unlike traditional plays, the work has a circular structure, since there is neither an actual beginning nor a conclusion and both acts not only end in almost the same way, the same place and the same time, but also begin in quite similar ways. Despite its structural simplicity, the play highlights several themes: 464

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1906 Samuel Beckett was born at Foxrock, near Dublin, into a Protestant AngloIrish family.

1927 KEY FACT He took his B.A. degree in Modern Literature (French and Italian) at Trinity College, Dublin.

WORKS

1928 KEY FACT He went to France as an exchange lecteur in the French École Normale in Paris. While there, he met James Joyce.

1940 During German occupation he was allowed to stay in France as Ireland remained neutral. He joined the French resistance movement, working as an underground agent in Paris.

1938

Murphy

1952

Waiting for Godot p. 464

1957

Endgame

1958

Krapp’s Last Tape

1969 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1962

Happy Days

1970

Breath

• Time The very title of the play reveals its central action: waiting. Didi and Gogo are forced to waste their days while anticipating the arrival of a man who never comes. Moreover, time is cyclical as it repeats itself with hardly any change and it becomes a much-feared barrier, a test of their ability to endure the boredom, anxiety, frustration and hopelessness that come with it. The characters have a faulty memory. Time loses meaning because they do not know whether what they do on one day has caused or will cause anything on another.

• Suffering Suffering ranges from the physical (Gogo’s aching feet, his being beaten at night, Pozzo’s being tied to a rope) to the mental and psychological (the lack of purpose and memory and the anguish, emotional instability and irritability that come with it). Isolation comes as a form of self-defence from the suffering, alternated with companionship as a temporary though inadequate relief from pain.

• Mortality ▼ Theatre representation of Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore

Death in the form of suicide is considered as a possible solution for the lack of action and purpose. Didi and Gogo do not commit suicide because they claim not to have a rope with which to hang themselves from the tree, but also because they are uncertain of the result of their attempt (it may work, it may fail).

• Salvation Didi and Gogo claim that if Godot comes, they will be saved. If he comes and doesn’t find them, they will be damned. They sometimes talk about the two thieves next to Christ in the crucifixion, remembering the fact that only one was saved while the other was damned. They take no action; waiting for the ‘salvation’ that never comes is the only ‘certainty’ offered in their lives.

Style The play was originally written in French and then translated by Beckett himself into English. The vocabulary is simple and quite easy to understand and the sentences are usually very short. However, language is disintegrated – half-statements, repetitions, misunderstandings, double meanings, monologues, telegraphic style, even excessive talking lead to nothing. Also, the many silences and pauses help the audience to realise that communication is impossible as they convey hesitation, fear, or just mere emptiness. The result is that language becomes absurd, purposeless and inconsistent, and merely a way of passing the time. IN ACTION Across time and space / Mediation

Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore by Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) shows in his comedy (1921) six characters who walk off a play script to claim that they are as real, if not more real, as the actors rehearsing. Il Capocomico Lor signori vogliono scherzare? Il Padre No, che dice mai, signore! Le portiamo al contrario un dramma doloroso. La Figliastra E potremmo essere la sua fortuna! Il Capocomico Ma mi facciano il piacere d’andar via, che non abbiamo tempo da perdere coi pazzi! Il Padre (ferito e mellifluo) Oh, signore, lei sa bene che la vita

è piena d’infinite assurdità, le quali sfacciatamente non han neppure bisogno di parer verosimili; perché sono vere. Il Capocomico Ma che diavolo dice? Il Padre Dico che può stimarsi realmente una pazzia, sissignore, sforzarsi di fare il contrario; cioè, di crearne di verosimili, perché pajano vere. Ma mi permetta di farle osservare che, se pazzia è, questa è pur l’unica ragione del loro mestiere. 1 Answer the questions. 1 What does the Father want to convince the Comedian of? 2 Both Pirandello and Beckett focus on the absurdity of life but both claim that their plays are comedic. How do you imagine that the actors should act to make their claim effective on stage? 2 Summarise what the characters say in a few sentences.

Ideas for your map: COMMUNICATION/TIME

p. 495

465

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK DRAMA

MIND MAP

Samuel Beckett

Theatre of the Absurd

Waiting for Godot

non-communication of language

Didi – Gogo

physical – psychological suffering

tragicomedy

death – salvation

language disintegration

two acts – circular structure farce

impossible communication

waiting – cyclical time

complementary/opposite characters

clowns – practical jokes

CHECK OUT

3 What characterised his career as playwright?

1 Answer the questions.

4 Who are the main characters of Waiting for Godot? Briefly describe them.

1 What is Beckett most famous for?

5 What themes are present in the play?

2 What are the main influences on his works?

6 What characterises the language of the play?

LEARNING DIGITAL

T78 Repeated time, meaningless life

Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Waiting for Godot

Didi considers how Gogo and he spent their time. The Boy arrives again with Mr Godot’s message. 1 Complete the summary with the given words. awake • anticipates • angrily • over • painful • uncertain • cries • forgets • escapes • asleep

EMOTIONAL LEARNING (1)

about whether he is asleep or (2)

, Didi recalls Pozzo’s visit and

CONSCIOUSNESS Didi describes the human conditionp. as XXX the gifts he gave to Gogo, who falls (3)Ideas for your. map: (4)

and (5)

. Soon after, he (6)

The Boy arrives and Didi (7)

all he has said.

all the Boy has to say: Godot won’t come today. When the

Boy asks Didi if he has a message for Godot, Didi at first hesitates but then gives him his message. After this he reacts (8)

, and the Boy (9)

The moon rises and the day is (10)

. .

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Does Didi believe that tomorrow will be different from today?

Vladimir Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier1, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? (Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off 2 again. Vladimir looks at him.) He’ll know nothing. 1 carrier: portaborse

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The Cold War Age – Authors and works

2 is dozing off: si sta appisolando

Samuel Beckett

2 Does the Boy recognise Didi?

3 Does the Boy remember meeting Didi before?

4 Who says that Godot won’t come, the Boy or Didi?

5 Why is Didi angry with the Boy? 6 Does the sun and the moon act differently from Act 1?

He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of 3 a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps4. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener5. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can’t go 10 on! (Pause.) What have I said? (He goes feverishly to and fro6, halts finally at extreme left, broods7. Enter Boy right. He halts. Silence.) Boy Mister… (Vladimir turns.) Mister Albert… Vladimir Off we go again8. (Pause.) Do you not recognize me? 15 Boy No Sir. Vladimir It wasn’t you came yesterday. Boy No Sir. Vladimir This is your first time. Boy Yes Sir. (Silence.) 20 Vladimir You have a message from Mr. Godot. Boy Yes Sir. Vladimir He won’t come this evening. Boy No Sir. Vladimir But he’ll come tomorrow. 25 Boy Yes Sir. Vladimir Without fail. Boy Yes Sir. (Silence.) Vladimir Did you meet anyone? Boy No Sir. […]9 30 What am I to tell Mr. Godot, Sir? Vladimir Tell him… (he hesitates) … tell him you saw me and that… (he hesitates) … that you saw me. (Pause. Vladimir advances, the Boy recoils10. Vladimir halts, the Boy halts. With sudden violence.) You’re sure you saw me, you won’t come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me! (Silence. Vladimir makes a sudden spring forward, the Boy 35 avoids him and exits running. Silence. The sun sets, the moon rises. As in Act 1.) (Abridged from Act 2) 3 Astride of: A cavallo di 4 lingeringly… forceps: esitando, il becchino sistema il forcipe 5 deadener: tranquillante

6 feverishly to and fro: freneticamente avanti e indietro 7 broods: medita profondamente 8 Off we go again: Si ricomincia

9 Didi fa delle domande al ragazzo relative all‘aspetto fisico di Godot, ma il ragazzo non sa molto di Godot. 10 recoils: indietreggia

ANALYSE

DEBATE

3 Answer the questions. 1 In Didi’s short monologue, life is presented as painful, hard and short-lasting. Is this condition true only for Didi and Gogo, or is it presented as universal? 2 What three ‘remedies’ are there for Gogo and Didi to face pain? Are they positive remedies or just palliatives? 3 What does the central metaphor of the gravedigger with the forceps mean? Choose all the correct options. a

We are born to die. It is the gravedigger that helps us to come to life. Life is absurd.

oming to life is as risky and painful as living life. Forceps force a child to come out of the womb, and C not without risk.

Death is the inevitable conclusion of our lives.

4 Debate the statement in groups.

Time is a constant and we all perceive it as such whatever we do.

Group A believe that we perceive time always in the same way regardless of what we are doing. Group B believe that we perceive time differently depending on what we are doing.

4 What kind of language do the characters use in the dialogue? PDF

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THE ARTS

What is time? Morning Sun (1952) by Edward Hopper

Paintings tend to represent time as static by freezing one particular moment and subject, whether it is a landscape or a human figure such as the woman sitting immersed in the morning sunlight in Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun. Installations, instead, are dynamic and the passing of time together with the action of visitors, when required, show that not even art is immutable in time, as it happens with The Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama.

Geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment were key aspects of the American realist Edward Hopper’s art (1882–1967) together with the use of light and shadow to create mood and represent such feelings as solitude, loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation. In Morning Sun, Hopper’s wife Jo is sitting in profile, in a pink slip, on a bed, staring out of a window. The picture portrays a person as a fully perceiving being for the first time in Hopper’s art. THINKING ROUTINE 2 What elements are brought into prominence by the sunlight? Choose all the correct options.

1 Answer the questions. Morning Sun

the woman’s cheeks

the wall behind the woman

1 What kind of light is there in the painting? Choose all the correct options.

the woman’s back

the urban landscape

the woman’s raw, red hands

the bed cover

diffused

direct

intermittent

uniform

3 Does the woman’s pose convey a sense of expectation towards time or a feeling of boredom? 4 What feelings does the painting evoke in you?

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The Obliteration Room (2002) by Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (1929) is a Japanese artist known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations.The Obliteration Room is an all-white, domestic room; visitors are given brightly-coloured stickers and encouraged to transform the space, covering its walls and furniture in stickers.

The Obliteration Room 5 What are the visitors doing? 6 Is the room still blank, all white as it was devised by the artist? 7 What is being ‘obliterated’ in this installation? 8 Is the room the same as the days pass? 9 Which work best reflects your view of the passing of time, Hopper’s or Yayoi Kusama’s?

Ideas for your map: TIME

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469

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK POETRY

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)

LEARNING DIGITAL S eamus Heaney and Death of a Naturalist

Profile Heaney’s work mostly deals with his local surroundings in Northern Ireland, the political and cultural issues related to Irish history, and its tradition of rural work, while exploring more personal themes such as human affection and love in extremely musical language. He spoke about his divided identity, between Ireland and England, but his patriotic sympathies lay with Ireland, and his cultural allegiance led him not to accept the Laureateship. In 1982 he even objected to his inclusion in a book of British poets.

Themes bog: an area of wet muddy ground

Recurring themes in his poems are childhood memories, rural labour and the bog, used as a metaphor for Ireland, thus giving a political leaning to his poems. In a sort of personal search, he began ‘digging’ into himself, into the historical roots of his land and even into language itself with the passion of an archaeologist. In Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poetry, Heaney thematically took his subject matter from the life and landscape of the Irish farming community where he grew up, with labourers, fishermen and farmers, and he depicted country life in all its hard daily reality. His poetry had an epiphanic quality and was full of references to pre-Christian myth – mostly Celtic, but also that of ancient Greece.

▶ Bog area after turf harvesting, Ireland

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LIFE 1939 KEY FACT Seamus Heaney was born in a Catholic family in Protestant Northern Ireland, and spent his childhood on a small farm.

1951 He won a scholarship to a Catholic school in Derry and then continued his studies in Belfast.

WORKS

IN ACTION Web quest 1 Search the web for information about rural labour today. What new techniques and ideas are being introduced? Do you think it is becoming appealing again to young people?

1980 KEY FACT He founded the Field Day Publishing and Theatre Company with other Irish artists and later he was Professor of Poetry at both Harvard and Oxford Universities.

1965 He taught as guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

1966

Death of a Naturalist (including Digging) p. 472

1995 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1975

2004

Bog Poems

The Burial at Thebes

2010

Human Chain

Language and style His style is characterised by extreme accuracy but it aims at simplicity, not obscurity, in total accordance with the common themes he chose for his poetry. Latinate elements of English are almost entirely removed from the language, with a great emphasis on hard guttural sounds and a preference for monosyllabic words.

MIND MAP

Northern Ireland

rural work

Seamus Heaney

childhood memories

epiphanic poetry

simple language

◀ The Turf Man, a sculpture named after one of Seamus Heaney’s poems. which was unveiled by the poet in his home village of Bellaghy in County Londonderry.

hard guttural sounds monosyllabic words

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which aspect of the Irish world is Heaney most interested in? 2 What are the themes of his poems? 3 Is his style elaborate?

Ideas for your map: RURAL WORK

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK POETRY LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

T79 Digging

Death of a Naturalist

In Digging, the opening poem of the collection Death of a Naturalist and a sort of confessional manifesto for his art, Heaney evokes the manual work of Irish labourers through the mask of a speaker whose tool is a pen. Most probably representing the poet himself, the speaker was brought up among the sounds and smells of work in the fields. His grandfather dug for peat (called ‘turf’ when cut) in a bog, while his father dug for potatoes, a traditional food in Ireland, and also a symbol of its history because of the Great Famine (1845–1852), a period of mass starvation due to massive potato crop failures.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. potatoes • resumed • peat • sounds • sitting • skilled • garden • bog • milk • looks down • manual • picked up

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The poet is (1)

, probably at his desk, with a pen in his hands, and (2)

from his window to see his father digging in the (3) years before his father dug for (4) (5)

. The poet remembers when twenty

, which the speaker and other boys

from the earth. His father, and his father’s father, were both (6)

their work. He remembers that once he brought his grandfather some (7) man was digging for (8) then (10) The smell and (11)

in the (9)

in while the old

. The man stopped to drink, and

his work, looking for good turf. associated with his father’s and grandfather’s (12)

work fill the poet’s mind. He looks at the pen in his hands. He will dig with that. ▲ Albin Egger-Lienz, Reapers in a Gathering Storm (1912)

Now read the poem and check your answers.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat1 pen rests; as snug2 as a gun. Under my window a clean rasping3 sound When the spade4 sinks into gravelly5 ground: 5 My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump6 among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping7 in rhythm through potato drills8 Where he was digging. 10 The coarse boot nestled on the lug9, the shaft10 Against the inside knee was levered firmly11. He rooted out12 tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

1 squat: tozza 2 snug: comoda e accogliente 3 rasping: raspante 4 spade: vanga 5 gravelly: ghiaioso 6 his straining rump: la sua schiena sotto sforzo 7 Stooping: piegandosi 8 potato drills: solchi per piantare le patate

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UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What is the father doing?

2 Where did he work? 3 What was he doing? 4 What tools did he use?

9 The coarse… lug: Il rozzo stivale poggiava saldamente sulla staffa della vanga 10 shaft: manico 11 levered firmly: tenuto saldo (il padre del poeta usava la parte interna del ginocchio per far meno fatica a vangare) 12 rooted out: estirpava

Seamus Heaney By God, the old man could handle a spade, Just like his old man13. My grandfather could cut more turf14 in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog15. Once I carried him milk in a bottle 20 Corked sloppily16 with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away17 Nicking and slicing neatly18, heaving sods19 Over his shoulder, digging down and down For the good turf. Digging. 25 The cold smell of potato mould20, the squelch and slap21 Of soggy22 peat, the curt23 cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head24. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb 30 The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it. 15

13 his old man: il suo vecchio (il nonno del poeta) 14 turf: torba 15 Toner’s bog: la palude di torba dei Toner 16 Corked sloppily: Sciattamente turata 17 fell to right away: riprese subito 18 Nicking and... neatly: Tagliando esattamente a fette il terreno 19 heaving sods: sollevando le zolle

5 Where did the grandfather work?

6 What was the grandfather doing?

20 mould: terriccio 21 squelch and slap: risucchio e stacco (il tonfo che fa la torba fradicia) 22 soggy: fradicia, molliccia 23 curt: secco 24 awaken in my head: mi si risvegliano in testa

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What activity do the speaker’s father and grandfather have in common, and how do they differ in their work? 2 What physical sensations (sound, touch and smell) are associated with each worker? 3 What will the poet use his pen for in the future? And how does this connect the speaker to his father and grandfather? 4 What is manual work like for the workers and the speaker? Choose all the correct options. painstaking a source of satisfaction exhausting engaging fascinating something they are proud of 5 What kind of memories are present in the poem (personal/collective, of ordinary/extraordinary realities, positive/negative)? 6 Heaney uses a great variety of sound devices (alliterations, consonances and assonances). Where do they appear most often? INTERPRET 4 Does the poet see himself simply as part of the tradition of his fathers, or as an evolution of their condition? PDF

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473

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969)

J ack Kerouac and On the Road PPT

Jack Kerouac

PDF

On the Road: full plot

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

Kerouac was a beatnik and the most important figure of the Beat Generation ( p. 449). The group’s core members were Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac himself. Restlessness, rebelliousness and unconventionality were the leading traits of the group, which is often seen as one of the first examples of counterculture in the modern world. Most of the writers of the Beat Generation were engaged with political issues, often indirectly and in a confusing and contradictory fashion. They objected to the politics of control and McCarthyism. During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathisers and suffered terrible consequences as a result of these accusations. Post-World War II consumerism represented the materialistic side of the American Dream in which class mobility was possible and a wealthy lifestyle within reach of ‘everyone’. The counterculture of the Beat Generation symbolised the Thoreauvian component of the American Dream: self-reliance, dedication and creativity. Wandering through the States was a dream that came true when Kerouac met Neal Cassady. With his total lack of inhibitions, his enthusiasm, his physical and sexual energy, in young Kerouac’s eyes Cassady became the Romantic Wanderer. More introverted and less confident than Cassady, during their journey it was probably through Cassady that Kerouac learned to enjoy a totally new way to experience American life, which he described in On the Road.

1 Match each word (1–3) to the correct definition (a–c). 1

beat

beatnik

McCarthyism

a anti-communist campaign of Republican US Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin b a person that identified themselves with the beat subculture c ‘beaten down’ (= beaten/ frustrated), short for ‘beatitude’ (Eastern religions)

On the Road (1957) The novel depicts the unconventional lifestyle of a group of friends travelling up and down the USA between 1947 and 1950 in an endless pursuit of life and freedom characterised by transgressive behaviours. These years mark a specific era in jazz history, with artists such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

Characters

THE PLOT

• Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac), the narrator and the protagonist, is a young Italian-American man living in New Jersey. His friend and travel companion, Dean Moriarty, becomes his fixation. In the end he settles down in New York. • Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) is a young and reckless Denver vagrant. He loves drugs, women and intellectualism, but is also very concerned with his father and family life. He marries and then divorces Camille and Mary Lou and has affairs with other women. • Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg) is an intellectual who writes poetry and plays jazz. He is Sal and Dean’s friend.

Sal Paradise meets Dean Moriarty, who has just come out of jail. Sal and Dean become friends and begin three years of restless journeys back and forth across the USA. Sal makes four trips, and goes to Denver, New Orleans, San Francisco and Mexico. He meets a lot of strange characters, as well as Carlo Marx. Sal, Dean and Carlo spend their time in jazz clubs, looking for ‘kicks’ (exciting activities) while 474

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

love-making, drinking, taking drugs and dancing, but also writing and debating important issues. Dean has three wives, Camille, Mary Lou and Inez, and four children in the course of these three years, and has affairs with other women. Sal, who at the beginning feels weak and depressed, gradually gains in joy and confidence and ends up returning to New York, where he settles down.

LIFE 1922 Jack Kerouac was born to FrenchCanadian parents in workingclass Lowell, Massachusetts.

1940 He won an athletic scholarship to Columbia University, New York, where he met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.

1942 He served in the United States Merchant Marine and then the United States Navy.

1944 KEY FACT He went back to New York, where he led a bohemian life with the representatives of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady.

1947–50 KEY FACT He made four trips around the US with Cassady.

1957 He moved to Orlando, Florida. The success of On the Road made him uncomfortable and he started drinking.

1957

WORKS

On the Road p. 474

1958

• Dharma Bums • The Subterraneans

1969 He died in San Francisco at the age of 47.

1962

Big Sur

Themes

IN ACTION

Sal, Dean and Carlo move across the whole country, and meet strange characters, in an endless search for identity and meaning. They are the representatives of a restless, idealistic youth who desire something more than boring conformity, and choose an unconventional lifestyle: the pleasure of adventure and transgression, wild parties along with momentary ecstasy provided by sex and drugs, but also the friendliness of people and the immensity and beauty of America with its wonderful landscapes. Conflict centres on their rebellion against conventional culture, and also on the tensions arising among the characters, trapped in complex relationships of friendship and love. They can also be sad at times, when the urge for more and more ‘kicks’ gives way to meditation and a sense of futility.

Look and think

Style ▲ The 37-metre scroll of On the Road displayed at the San Francisco Main Library

2 Answer the questions. 1 What is there in the display case? 2 Is it one piece or many sheets?

MIND MAP

3 Do you think it would be easy to revise or edit your text if you used a typewriter?

Jack Kerouac

Beatnik culture

rebelliousness

unconventionality

Romantic Wanderer – Neal Cassady

The music of jazz artists such as Charlie Parker influenced Kerouac in developing his ‘spontaneous bop prosody’. The novel was typed on a long scroll in only three weeks because this obliged Kerouac to write quickly and ‘spontaneously’, with no revision or editing. His prose reproduces the informal style of oral language, with invented words.

On the Road

pursuit of life and freedom

transgression

unconventional lifestyle sex – drugs – wild parties

meeting people

beauty of America

no editing – oral language

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What are the main traits of Kerouac as a beatnik? 2 Who are the main characters of On the Road?

3 What are the themes present in the novel? 4 What influenced Kerouac in developing his spontaneous prose, and what characterised it?

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL

T80 More, more life

On the Road

Sal and Dean are out looking for girls, and Dean meets Sal’s friend Carlo Marx.

Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. affairs • exciting • dancing • cares • like

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Dean Moriarty meets Sal Paradise’s friend Carlo Marx for the first time, and they (1) each other immediately. They start telling each other about their lives, encounters and love (2)

. They start (3)

kind of people he (4) (5)

and Sal tries to follow them because the only about are those who are crazy but in love with an

life.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Scene from the 2012 film version of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Who was Dean supposed to meet?

2 How did Dean and Carlo react as they met? 3 What makes them similar? 4 How does Sal feel?

We1 went to New York-I forget what the situation was, two colored girls-there were no girls there; they were supposed to meet him2 in a diner and didn’t show up. We went to his parking lot where he had a few things to do-change his clothes in the shack3 in back and spruce up4 a bit in front of a cracked mirror and so on, and then we took off. And that was the night Dean met Carlo Marx. A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo 5 Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat5. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes-the holy con-man6 with the shining7 mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx. From that moment on I saw very little of Dean, and I was a little sorry too. Their energies met head-on8, I was a 10 lout9 compared, I couldn’t keep up with them. 10 The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the American Night. Carlo told him of Old Bull Lee, Elmer Hassel, Jane Lee11 in Texas growing weed12, Hassel on Riker’s Island13, Jane wandering on Times Square in a benzedrine hallucination14, with her baby girl in her arms and ending up in Bellevue. And Dean told Carlo of unknown people 15 in the West like Tommy Snark, the clubfooted poolhall rotation shark and cardplayer and queer saint. He told him of Roy Johnson15, Big Ed Dunkel16, his boyhood buddies17, his

1 We: Sal e Dean 2 him: Carlo Marx 3 shack: baracca 4 spruce up: darsi una rinfrescata 5 took... hat: si sono piaciuti subito 6 con-man: (slang) imbroglione 7 shining: brillante 8 met head-on: si incontrarono subito 9 lout: ignorantone 10 swirl: agitazione

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11 Questi personaggi rapppresentano William Burroughs (romanziere americano, conosciuto anche col suo pen name William Lee, 1914–97), Herbert Edwin Huncke (1915–96), a cui si attribuisce l’invenzione del termine Beat Generation, Joan Vollmer (1923– 51), il piu importante membro femminile del movimento. 12 growing weed: a coltivare l’erba (la droga)

13 Riker’s Island: un’isola nel Bronx 14 benzedrine hallucination: uno stato di allucinazione indotto dalla ‘benny’, la benzedrina, un tipo di anfetamina 15 Roy Johnson: lo ‘chauffeur’ temporaneo di Dean e Sal a San Francisco 16 Big Ed Dunkel: ha visioni, e anche una relazione non convenzionale con Galatea, la moglie 17 buddies: amici

Jack Kerouac

5 What kind of people has Sal always been interested in?

street buddies, his innumerable girls and sex-parties and pornographic pictures, his heroes, heroines, adventures. They rushed down the street together, digging18 everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then 20 they danced down the streets like dingledodies19, and I shambled after20 as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you 25 see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”21 What did they call such young people in Goethe’s Germany22? (From Part 1, Chapter 1)

18 digging: esplorando 19 dingledodies: amiconi (è una parola inventata) 20 shambled after: gli andavo dietro dinoccolando

21 goes ‘Awww!‘: fa “Uau!“ 22 Un’allusione agli Stürmer und Dränger, i membri del movimento tedesco romantico (1760–80 circa), figure ribelli

che si oppongono ad ogni convenzione e che ricercano emozioni estreme.

▶ Another scene from the film adaptation of On the Road

ANALYSE 4 Kerouac’s language imitates speech. Find a few examples of:

3 Are these statements True (T) or False (F)? Correct the false ones.

• slang and/or colloquial words

1 Dean and Carlo have very quiet lives although they have very strong personalities.

T F

2 Their friends’ lives are unconventional and transgressive.

T F

• informal grammar (use of ‘and’ or no conjunctions, commas or dashes, irregular constructions)

3 Dean is reticent about the unconventional experiences he has gone through.

T F

INTERPRET

4 Sal describes himself as a conman full of cunning and always up to new original experiences.

T F

5 Sal feels totally part of his friends’ new world and joins them in their rambling expeditions through the city.

T F

• repetitions

5 Dean and Carlo are like burning candles, devouring life. Can you think of any other character who had such an intense, unconventional life? PDF

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477

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL F lannery O’Connor and The Life You Save May Be Your Own PPT

Flannery O’Connor

PDF

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: full plot

IN ACTION They said of this...

We all are mean dark creatures

The singer Bruce Springsteen repeatedly mentioned Flannery O’Connor’s stories as an important influence for his art.

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) Profile Flannery O’Connor mainly wrote short stories, which were all published in the collection The Complete Short Stories in 1971. A Roman Catholic, she spent almost all her life in Georgia, in the area known as ‘The Bible Belt’, the Protestant South, breeding her beloved peacocks. Her upbringing in the South heavily influenced her writing, which features regional settings and grotesque deeply flawed characters, as well as issues of morality, disability, and racism. Her dark wit relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South and to convey a message about the need for spiritual renewal. In her stories, she frequently criticises the consumerism, greediness and spiritual indifference of modern society and its loss of the spiritual, so important to her, through the characters’ distorted obsessions with material concerns.

There was something in those stories of hers that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about. They were a big, big revelation. She got to the heart of some part of meanness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn’t be getting it. It was always at the core of every one of her stories—the way that she’d left that hole there, that hole that’s inside of everybody. There was some dark thing—a component of spirituality—that I sensed in her stories, and that set me off exploring characters of my own. (Bruce Springsteen, conversation with Will Percy, nephew of the novelist Walker Percy, 1998)

Web quest 2 Search the web to listen to some songs by Bruce Springsteen and analyse the lyrics. Do you see any similarities with O’Connor’s stories and characters?

1 Answer the questions. 1 What does Springsteen appreciate in O’Connor’s stories? Why? 2 How did she inspire him?

The Life You Save May Be Your Own (1955) The story focuses on three characters: Lucynell Crater, an old widow who lives with her daughter on a decaying farm, her daughter, also named Lucynell, a deaf-mute girl with physical disabilities, and Mr Shiftlet, a man missing part of his left arm and who is constantly on the move. The old woman is determined to marry off her daughter, who is unable to communicate and only manages to say her first word, ‘bird‘, when Mr Shiftlet teaches her. But Shiftlet wants to get a hold of the old women’s car. 478

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LIFE 1925 KEY FACT Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, into a Roman Catholic family.

1938 Her father’s lupus (an inflammatory autoimmune disease) got worse, and the family moved to rural Milledgeville, her mother’s home town.

1945 KEY FACT She graduated from Georgia State College for Women and then studied creative writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

1954 She lived modestly, writing and raising her peacocks on her mother’s farm at Milledgeville as she suffered from lupus.

1952

WORKS

Wise Blood

1955

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (including The Life You Save May Be Your Own) p. 478

1960

The Violent Bear It Away

1964 The illness eventually proved fatal.

1965

Everything That Rises Must Converge (posthumous)

1971

The Complete Stories (posthumous)

THE PLOT One evening, near sunset, Tom T. Shiftlet arrives at Lucynell Crater’s farm. He agrees to do some repairs and in return he will be given food and can sleep in an old broken car. In a week Shiftlet does some repairs, and Mrs Crater tries to convince him to marry her daughter, saying that the girl is only sixteen or seventeen (she is actually thirty) and that he will have a home. Mr Shiftlet repairs the old car and convinces Mrs Crater to give him the money to paint it. He agrees to marry the girl on condition that the woman gives him $1,750 with the excuse that he must take his wife on a honeymoon. The following Saturday, Shiftlet and the girl are married and leave

for Mobile, Alabama. About a hundred miles from the farm, he stops and abandons the sleeping girl in a diner. He tells the counter attendant that she is only a hitchhiker. As he drives away, he notices the road sign ‘Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own‘, and feeling that ‘a man with a car had a responsibility to others,‘ he picks up a young male hitchhiker. Shiftlet talks to him about the virtues of his own old mother because he thinks the boy may have run away from home but the boy insults him and all mothers and jumps out of the car. Shiftlet is momentarily shocked but then drives on to Mobile in an approaching storm.

Symbolism The names of the characters carry symbolic meaning in the story. Mrs Crater’s family name represents emptiness and void, for both mother and daughter, while Mr Shiftlet (from shifty) represents falsity and deceit. The colour imagery represents the characters’ real personalities. Shiftlet wears a black suit and a brown hat, both colours associated with death, degradation and the underworld. Grey is the colour of Mrs Crater’s hats and the young hitchhiker‘s and of the cloud which descends over the sun at the end of the story. It represents egoism, depression, inertia, and indifference. The daughter, instead, has blue eyes and wears a blue dress and then the white dress of a bride. They are colours representing purity, innocence and heavenly grace. Blue is the colour of the Virgin Mary’s dress in traditional Christian painting and the boy at the diner calls her an angel of God when he sees her sleeping in her white bridal dress. By abandoning Lucynell, Shiflet misses the one chance offered to him to ‘redeem’ himself and instead falls back on his moralising, a disguise to himself of his own corrupt false nature. Christian imagery reinforces meaning, though in a hidden way that leaves the reader free to read the story at a purely realistic level (a story of ignorance, misery and deceit) or in more spiritual terms (a story of missed salvation of souls and of grace lost). Shiftlet arrives at sunset and his figure forms a crooked cross as he stretches his arm and his stump against the sun. He is not the saviour of souls that Mrs Crater wants him to be, but a distorted image of the saviour.

Themes

• Evil and salvation The title ironically introduces the reader to the characters’ destinies. None of their lives are actually saved. Mrs Crater thinks Mr Shiftlet is ‘no one to be afraid of‘ and that he will save her and Lucynell from a life of emptiness and loneliness. Ironically, Shiftlet abandons Lucynell at a diner far from her home without anyone to take care of her and then drives away in the old woman’s car. The old woman remains alone having lost her daughter, money and car, and Mr Shiftlet, who thinks that he can save the world from corruption, loses his chance to have a family and a home and to be ‘with an angel’, Lucynell. He is unable to settle down and is obsessed with the car, which symbolically represents his attachment to material things and his restlessness, and becomes his ‘coffin’ (the place where he sleeps). He is obsessed with the morality and cruelty of the world, but he is corrupt and evil

Ideas for your map: EVIL/SALVATION

p. 495

479

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

himself. When he drives off towards the storm, the road sign ‘Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own‘ ironically warns him that he may be losing his own life. However, he fails to understand the message. He picks up a boy and once again teaches his lesson of good morals, this time about the love that is due to one’s mother. The boy rejects his false salvation and jumps out of the car insulting motherhood and revealing Shiftlet’s words as empty. The man bears all the signs of darkness, i.e. evil – he lacks an arm and he strikes the pose of a crooked cross against the setting sun when he first talks to the old woman, and he himself claims that he could be lying about his name and his origins. The old woman is blind to all the signs, though. Shiftlet’s interest in the mystery of life, his occupation as a carpenter, and his claim that he has ‘a moral intelligence‘ all suggest that he is potentially able to accept salvation. He chooses to reject it and the car he drives off in becomes his spiritual coffin. MIND MAP

Roman Catholic – Georgia (‘Bible Belt’)

grotesque flawed characters

Flannery O’Connor

morality – disability – racism

The Life You Save Might Be Your Own

loss of the Holy

need of spiritual renewal

symbolism

characters’ names – Mrs Crater / Mr Shiftlet

CHECK OUT

obsession with material concerns

evil – salvation

road sign – ironic warning

colours

3 What is she critical of?

1 Answer the questions. 1 What influenced O’Connor in her writing?

4 What symbols are present in the short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own?

2 What characterises her stories?

5 What themes are present?

T81 Leaving an angel behind LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Mr Shiflet has married Lucynell in town and he drives the automobile that he obtained together with some money from Lucynell’s mother. The old woman gave them their lunch and they are driving towards Mobile on what should be their honeymoon.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. hitchhiker • looking • abandons • in advance • asleep

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Mr Shiflet is driving the car and (1) He orders her some food but she falls (2)

at Lucynell. He decides to stop for lunch at a diner. . Mr Shiflet tells the boy behind the counter

to give Lucynell whatever she wants when she wakes up and pays (3) them says that she looks like an angel, and Shiftlet replies that she is a (4) (5)

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

. Mr Shiftlet

the girl and heads towards Mobile. He sees a sign that warns drivers to drive carefully.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

480

. The boy serving

Flannery O’Connor UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is the car what Shiftlet imagines?

2 What makes Shiftlet feel depressed? 3 Is Lucynell really hungry?

4 Why does Mr Shiftlet say that Lucynell is a hitchhiker?

The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded by pale blue sky. Although the car would go only thirty miles an hour, Mr. Shiftlet imagined a terrific climb and dip and swerve1 that went entirely to his head so that he forgot his morning bitterness. He had always wanted an automobile but he had never been able to afford one before. He drove 5 very fast because he wanted to make Mobile by nightfall. Occasionally he stopped his thoughts long enough to look at Lucynell in the seat beside him. She had eaten the lunch as soon as they were out of the yard and now she was pulling the cherries off the hat one by one and throwing them out the window. He became depressed in spite of the car. He had driven about a hundred miles when he decided that she must be hungry again and at the next small town they came to, he stopped in front of an aluminum- 10 painted eating place called The Hot Spot and took her in and ordered her a plate of ham and grits. The ride had made her sleepy and as soon as she got up on the stool, she rested her head on the counter and shut her eyes. There was no one in The Hot Spot but Mr. Shiftlet and the boy behind the counter, a pale youth with a greasy rag2 hung over his shoulder. Before he 15 could dish up the food, she was snoring gently. “Give it to her when she wakes up,” Mr. Shiftlet said. “I’ll pay for it now.” The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. “She looks like an angel of Gawd,” he 20 murmured. “Hitch-hiker,” Mr. Shiftlet explained. “I can’t wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa.” The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left. He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry3 and the country had flattened out4. Deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of 25 air from the earth before it broke. There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt too that a man with a car had a responsibility to others and he kept his eye out for a hitch-hiker. Occasionally he saw a sign that warned: “Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own.” 1 a terrific climb and dip and swerve: una salita, una discesa e una sterzata terrificanti 2 greasy rag: straccio unto

3 sultry: afoso 4 flattened out: appiattito

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which details underline that Lucynell is a defenceless creature? 2 What does the road sign remind Mr Shiftlet of, literally and ironically? Remember that he has just abandoned Lucynell. 3 What narrator is present in the extract? Choose the correct alternatives. a internal/external b intrusive/non-intrusive c omniscient/non-omniscient INTERPRET 4 Do you think that Mr Shiftlet intended to abandon Lucynell from the start, or that his irresponsible nature prevailed in the end? PDF

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▲ A farm in Georgia, USA

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481

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

Alice Walker (1944)

LEARNING DIGITAL A lice Walker and The Color Purple PDF

The Color Purple: full plot

Profile Alice Walker is an international author and social activist whose books include novels, collections of short stories, children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. Her work is commonly associated with the African-American Women’s Movement. In the 1970s and 1980s, the writers of the New Afro-American Renaissance moved away from black social protest and gave voice to the ‘novel of memory’, an act of moral obligation, admiration and respect for the quiet heroism and courage of their ancestors. This led many writers to look for their roots back in Africa and to choose the rural South as the proper place where the Afro-American heritage had originated. Walker’s poetry is based on her political experiences during the Civil Rights Movement and the summer she spent as an exchange student in Uganda during her visit to Africa. Her novels focus primarily on the inner workings of African-American life and multidimensional relationships among women. She depicts the humanity in her characters through various narrative techniques such as writing in dialect, using letters for narration, and employing oral storytelling traditions.

◀ African-American Women’s Movement in Washington D.C.

The Color Purple (1982) Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple, the first African-American woman to do so. The novel depicts rape, incest, bisexuality, and lesbian love among Afro-Americans, but its success lies in the themes of racism, sexism and feminism, seen from the point of view of women suffering hardships of all sorts, never giving in to despair and finally managing to rebuild their lives and even to reshape those of their male oppressors. Celie, the protagonist, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in rural Georgia. She is beaten and raped by a man she believes to be her father. The Color Purple is an epistolary novel with letters written by Celie to God until she again finds her sister, Nettie, who was lost to her. From that moment on the letter exchange is between Nettie, who writes more articulate letters because of her longer schooling, and Celie herself. 482

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

LIFE 1944 KEY FACT Alice Malsenior Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, in the Deep South, the eighth child of poor tenant farmers.

1952 An accident left her blind in one eye. Her mother freed her from household chores, gave her a typewriter and she began to write stories.

1961 She obtained a scholarship and was able to complete her studies. She also became a political activist.

1965 KEY FACT She obtained a B.A. degree and moved to Mississippi. She became involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

WORKS

1967 Walker married Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were the first legally-married interracial couple to live in Mississippi.

1976 She got a divorce and dated both men and women.

1970

The Third Life of Grange Copeland

1982 1976

Meridian

1973

In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women

The Color Purple p. 482

1993

Warrior Marks

2000

The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart

2018

Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

THE PLOT Alphonso rapes his daughter Celie, who gives birth first to a girl and then to a boy. Both infants are stolen by Alphonso and presumed dead. After Celie’s mother dies, Alphonso marries again but continues to abuse Celie. A man known only as Mr. ___ wants to marry Nettie, Celie’s sister, but Alphonso offers him the ‘ugly‘ Celie. Celie marries Mr.___ but he is as violent and abusive to her as her father was. Nettie runs away after Alphonso tries to abuse her, and Celie assumes she is dead. Harpo, Mr.___ son, marries Sofia because she is pregnant. She is stronger than her husband, and won’t be beaten into submission. Shug Avery, a singer who has come to town to perform, falls sick and Celie nurses her at her home. The two women become friends, and Celie is sexually attracted to Shug. Sofia first escapes with her children but later returns. One day she knocks the mayor down when he hits her for refusing to work for his wife. She is sentenced to work for twelve years as the mayor’s maid. Shug returns with Grady, her new husband, but begins an affair with Celie. They often sleep together. Shug shows Celie the many letters that Nettie has

written over the years, and which Mr.___ has kept for himself, hidden in a box. Nettie has gone to Africa with two missionaries, Samuel and Corrine, who have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie realises that they are Celie’s children, and also finds out that Alphonso is Nettie and Celie’s step-father. Alphonso pretended to be their father only to secure himself the house and property that was once their mother’s. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God and angrily curses Mr.___ for his years of abuse. Shug and Celie move to Tennessee, where Celie turns her hobby of sewing individually tailored pairs of pants into a business. Alphonso dies, so his house and land are now Celie’s, and she moves in there. Nettie and Samuel marry, and Samuel’s son, Adam, marries Tashi, a native African girl. Celie and Mr.___ reconcile as he has redeemed himself. Sofia remarries Harpo and now works in Celie’s clothing store. Nettie finally returns to America with Samuel and the children and she and Celie are finally reunited. Despite being old, Celie claims that she has never felt younger in her life.

Themes • Self-discovery and womanhood The novel reveals the cause of black women’s oppression, i.e. patriarchy, and it also points out to black women that only sisterhood can unite them and help them realise their own worth and obtain freedom. Celie’s journey of self-discovery sees her change from a passive, quiet girl unable to understand her femininity and pregnancies to a much more self-aware and independent individual. She is expected to serve her abusive father, and, later, her husband Mr.___, but she learns to manage a house and then a business of her own, and thanks to her romance with Shug, she discovers her sexuality, repressed by years of abuse. Celie’s moment of self-discovery is marked by her decision to write letters no longer to God, but to Nettie. In the end, Celie creates her own family with Mr.___, Shug, Harpo, Sofia, Nettie and her own children. Strong female characters come together with repentant male ones.

• Violence and hope Brutal violence and the suffering that comes with it almost destroy the female characters. Celie is raped by her stepfather, abused and beaten by her husband, Sofia is nearly beaten to death, Nettie is almost raped by her stepfather and by Mr.___. Violence also dominates generally in society. Celie’s biological father and uncles were killed by whites jealous of their business success; in Africa, men in the Olinka village have absolute control over their wives, and are in turn brutalised and killed by the whites. Hope lies in the bond that women can develop, primarily by Celie and Nettie’s lasting union despite the long separation, and in the form of the initiation to love by Shug, who helps the abused girl to discover her own sexuality. 483

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

Language and style Celie’s earliest letters to God reveal the naivety of a small child but they are often shocking because they describe the horrible world in which she grows up. The letters then become longer and more articulate and reveal her path towards self-awareness. Walker makes extensive use of idioms and vocabulary that are particularly found in the rural South, drawing upon dialectal features of AAVV, African American Vernacular English. It has its own vocabulary, grammar, sounds and pronunciation patterns.

IN ACTION Across time and space

Women that rewrote their lives The Red Tent (1997) by Anita Diamant focuses on Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, a prophet of God. Dinah is a character of minor importance in the Bible, but in the novel she speaks in the first person about how she went through the violence of men to find her own life in Egypt, in a female retelling of Biblical history. A miniseries has been made of the novel, too.

MIND MAP

writer and social activist

Circe (2018) by Madeline Miller is a retelling of the myth of Circe, the witch who turned men into pigs in the Odyssey. Circe refuses the two options that are offered to her, either to be a poor thing deceived by men or an evil monster, and rewrites her own story in totally different terms.

Web quest 2 Search the web to read more from The Color Purple, for example one of Celie’s letters to her sister, and from one or both of the contemporary novels about women growing to be independent in a maledominated world. Which female figure do you think is most beautifully portrayed? Give reasons for your preference.

Alice Walker

‘novel of memory’

African-American Women’s Movement

1 What is similar/different in the novels The Red Tent and Circe?

AfricanAmerican life

The Color Purple

racism – sexism – feminism

multidimensional relationships among women

epistolary novel

self-discovery and womanhood

brutal violence

patriarchy vs sisterhood Celie’s journey of self-discovery as a woman

language and style

idioms and vocabulary of rural South dialect features of AAVV

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What are Walker’s works based on?

3 How significant is violence in women’s lives, and how are they able to go beyond it?

2 What are black women oppressed by, and how do they become free in the novel?

4 What attitude does Celie have as she writes her letters to God, and what kind of language does she use?

484

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: VIOLENCE

p. 495

Alice Walker

T82 Celie writes to God

The Color Purple

LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Celie has been forced into marriage with Mr.___, and writes to God about how she spent her wedding day and her wedding night.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. bride • comb • tangled • unresponsive • bleeding • hits

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Celie writes about her first day and night as a (1) (2)

her on the head and she starts (3)

and asks Mr.___ to shave the girls’ hair because it is (4) (5)

. Her 12-year-old stepson brutally badly. She bandages her head but he refuses. Celie has to

the girls’ hair for a long time because nobody has done it since they lost their

mother. That night she lies (6)

while Mr.___ has sex with her. She only thinks of her sister

and Shug. ▲ Scene from the 1985 film version

Now read the extract and check your answers.

of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Why does the 12-year-old boy beat Celie? 2 Does Mr.___ say or do anything about the boy’s brutality?

3 Why do the girls cry when Celie combs their hair?

4 Why does she put her arm around Mr.___?

Dear God, I spent my wedding day running away from the oldest brother. He twelve. His mother died in his arms and he don’t want to hear nothing bout no new one. He pick up a rock and laid my head open. The blood ran all down tween my breasts. His Daddy say Don’t do that. But that’s all he say. He got four children, instead of three, two boys and two girls. The girls’ hair ain’t been comb since their mammy died. I tell him I’ll just have to shave it 5 off. Start fresh. He say bad luck to cut a woman hair. So after I bandage my head best I can and cook dinner – they have a spring, not a well, and a wood stove look like a truck. I start trying to untangle hair. They only six and eight and they cry. They scream. They cuse me of murder. By ten o’clock I’m done. They cry theirselves to sleep. But I don’t cry. I lay there thinking about Nettie while he on top of me, wonder is she safe. And then I think bout Shug 10 Avery. I know what he doing to me he done to Shug Avery and maybe she like it. I put my arm around him.

▶ Poster of the 1985 film version of the novel

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Is Celie free to make her own choices once she is married? 2 What kind of life is she starting in her new family? 3 Focus on Celie’s language. What features of AAVV dialect are present? WEB QUEST 4 Search the web for information concerning the consequences of violence at a very early age on the growth of an individual, and what can contribute to their resilience. PDF

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485

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in Africa

Wole Soyinka (1934)

LEARNING DIGITAL W ole Soyinka and Telephone Conversation

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

A poet and a playwright, Soyinka combines his passionate attachment to his African roots with experimentalism in art. He attacks both Negritude and Western-based prejudices against black people, in favour of real integration. Confronted with Africa’s political troubles and its struggle to reconcile tradition with modernisation, Soyinka warns against excesses in either African or Western impulse. In his play A Dance of the Forests he warns against living in nostalgia for Africa’s past, while in The Lion and the Jewel he ridicules Africa’s indiscriminate embrace of Western modernisation. His style combines traditional Yoruban Folk Drama with European dramatic forms, and his plays and poems are remarkable for their witty dialogues and irony.

1 Which description corresponds to Negritude, and which to Yoruba Folk Drama? a traditional rite, under the exclusive control of men, presented as a masquerade in which ancestors visit their descendants: b black people are too selfprotective of their own identity after 19th-century colonialists convinced their ancestors to suppress native African culture local as pagan and improper: Web quest 2 Search the web to find examples of either Folk Drama or traditions of the Yoruba ethnic group, also outside Nigeria.

MIND MAP

poet – playwright

Wole Soyinka

refusal of excesses

African roots

Negritude

experimentalism in art

Western prejudices

witty dialogues irony

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 Which two aspects coexist in Soyinka’s art? 2 Which extremes concerning African heritage does he reject in his plays? 3 What characterises his style?

T83 Telephone Conversation (1963) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

486

The poem is a dramatic monologue in which a dark West African man looking for a flat recounts a telephone call he made to a white potential landlady. The poet’s refined irony at the shallow racist attitude of the white woman shows that even in modern Britain of the 1960s, culture and wealth had not fully eliminated racist attitudes. They were masked by politeness and civility, but behind their refined surface a person’s colour may still have counted more than education, however refined it may have been.

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Ideas for your map: RACISM

p. 495

LIFE 1934 Wole Soyinka was born and educated in Nigeria.

1954 KEY FACT He studied English literature at the University of Leeds. Back in Nigeria, he became an outspoken critic of Nigerian military dictators. 1959

WORKS

The Lion and the Jewel

1960

A Dance of the Forests

STEP IN

1975–99 He was a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University.

1963

Telephone Conversation p. 486

1986 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1988 He taught in various universities in the US.

1975

Death and the King’s Horsemen

1965

1997 Soyinka fled Nigeria after General Sani Abacha pronounced a death sentence on him.

1999 KEY FACT The dictatorship came to an end. He returned to Nigeria to a hero’s welcome. 2012

Of Africa

The Road

1 Complete the summary with the given words. confesses • buttocks • shade • invitation • white • prejudiced • hangs up • black

EMOTIONAL LEARNING A (1)

man talks to a (2)

woman on the phone, from a phone box

somewhere in England. He would like to rent her flat, and he (3) expects her to be (4)

he is African as he

. The woman wants to know the exact (5)

the man’s colour, and asks several questions about this. He describes the different parts of his body (face, hands, feet and also buttocks) as lighter or darker. The woman (6) the man’s final ironic (7)

to see the man’s (8)

, and does not hear for herself.

Now read the poem and check your answers.

The price seemed reasonable, location Indifferent1. The landlady swore she lived Off premises2. Nothing remained But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned3, 5 “I hate a wasted journey—I am African.” Silence. Silenced transmission of Pressurized good-breeding4. Voice, when it came, Lipstick coated, long gold rolled Cigarette-holder pipped5. Caught I was foully6. 10 “HOW DARK?7”… I had not misheard… “ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?” Button B, Button A8. Stench9 Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak10. Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered Omnibus squelching tar11. It was real! Shamed

1 Indifferent: indifferente, nel doppio significato di neither good nor bad e not partial, unbiased 2 swore… premises: spergiurava di vivere altrove 3 warned: avvisai 4 Pressurized good-breeding: buona educazione pressurizzata (l’uomo sente il silenzio che segue alla sua “confessione”) 5 Lipstick... pipped: al lucilalabbra lucido, al lungo e dorato bocchino

di sigaretta (segni della ricchezza ed eleganza della donna) 6 Caught… foully: (‘I was caught foully‘) Colto in fallo 7 Le parole della donna sono in maiuscolo. 8 Button B, Button A: i tasti sul telefono (le domande della donna “schiacciano sul tasto” A o B – light or very dark – causando nell’uomo crescente rabbia ed irritazione)

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Is the location to rent good? 2 What does the man confess?

3 Is the woman wealthy and well-bred?

4 Is the man happy with the woman’s questions and silences on the phone?

9 Stench: Puzza 10 hide-and-speak: giocare a non dirsi/dirsi, un gioco di parole sull’espressione to play hideand-seek (giocare a nascondino) 11 Red… tar: l’uomo nota gli oggetti rossi (la cabina del telefono, la cassetta della posta e l’autobus a due piani che sta passando) attorno a lui e “ci vede rosso”

487

AUTHORS AND WORKS 15 By ill-mannered silence, surrender Pushed dumbfounded12 to beg simplification13. Literature in Africa

12 surrender… dumbfounded: l’uomo non crede alle proprie orecchie 13 to beg simplification: a chiedere una semplificazione (il gioco ironico prosegue, “l’uomo nero” è troppo stupido per capire e chiede che gli venga spiegato in modo più semplice) 14 Considerate she was: Era pure premurosa 15 Revelation came: mi illuminai 16 plain or milk chocolate: cioccolato bianco o al latte (la contro domanda dell’uomo è chiaramente ironica e potenzialmente comica) 17 clinical: distaccato 18 crushing: schiacciante

Considerate she was14, varying the emphasis— “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came15. “You mean—like plain or milk chocolate16?” Her assent was clinical17, crushing18 in its light Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted19, I chose. “West African sepia20”—and as afterthought, “Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic Flight of fancy21, till truthfulness clanged her accent Hard on the mouthpiece22. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding “DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette23.” “THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether. Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet24 Are a peroxide blond25. Friction, caused— Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned My bottom raven black26—One moment, madam!” —sensing Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap About my ears27—“Madam,” I pleaded28, “wouldn’t you rather See for yourself 29?” 19 wave-length adjusted: aggiustando il tiro, letteralmente “aggiustando la lunghezza d’onda” (il tutto è ancora più comico, considerando che la conversazione avviene da una cabina telefonica e quindi potrebbero esserci “problemi di linea”) 20 sepia: seppia 21 Silence… fancy: la donna non riesce a identificare la sfumatura di colore 22 truthfulness… mouthpiece: la sincerità non fece risuonare/il suo duro accento nella cornetta 23 brunette: moro 24 soles of my feet: le piante dei piedi

25 peroxide blond: biondo perossido (il perossido è usato per scolorire i capelli, quindi un colore molto chiaro) 26 My bottom raven black: Il mio sedere in nero corvino 27 sensing… my ears: avvertendo che il suo ricevitore si alzava in un fragore di tuono fin

5 Is friction really the cause of the man’s skin colour? 6 Does the woman finally understand that the man is making fun of her prejudiced questions? nelle orecchie (la donna sta riattaccando, perché ha finalmente capito che l’uomo si sta facendo gioco delle sue domande, oppure perché è offesa del fatto che lui le parli del suo sedere) 28 pleaded: perorai/ implorai 29 for yourself: da sé

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Are the man’s apologies and ‘shame’ the real expression of his sense of identity or of his ironic projection of the woman’s prejudices? 2 Does the man respond to the woman’s questions with indignation, anger, or irony? 3 How does the woman’s attitude change as the conversation moves on? Put the following states into the right order. cold and impersonal

embarrassed

shocked

arrogant

▲ Nigerian Yoruba dance

INTERPRET

4 Is the focalisation internal or external?

4 What is the meaning of the poem as regards racism and a proper response to it?

5 What does the man’s ironic manipulation of some idioms (seeing red – being angry; pushing one’s buttons – annoying someone; being on the same wavelength – being in agreement) reveal about him?

5 Compare the man’s and woman’s attitudes to Robinson’s and Friday’s in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe ( p. 152). How different are they? PDF

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THE ARTS

Two planes for two women The arts have contributed to make the public more sensitive to issues of ethicity and racism through denunciation of open injustice, but parody probably remains one of the most effecttive ways to alert a viewer to the reality of persisting racial stereotypes.

I Like Olympia in Black Face (1970) by Larry Rivers

▼ Édouard Manet, Olympia (1863)

Larry Rivers (1933–2002) was an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, poet and jazz musician; his love for jazz with its variations and improvisations contributed to his irreverent style, an anticipation of Pop art. I Like Olympia in Black Face, or Black Olympia, a painted relief, mirrors and parodies Olympia by the French Impressionist painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883). With his provocative high-class prostitute attended by a black servant offering her flowers, Manet’s work was in its turn a parody of idealised nudes. The irreverence that the relief reveals is part of Rivers’ unconventionality and tendency towards bravado and self-parody. THINKING ROUTINE 1 Answer the questions. 1 Who is lying in the foreground, and who is she served by? 2 Who is lying in the background, and who is she served by? 3 Which figure mirrors the two servants in colour? 4 Are the flowers on the two nude women’s heads different colours? 5 Which bouquet of flowers is more brightly coloured, the white woman’s or the black woman’s? 6 Compare Rivers’ relief to Manet’s painting. What is different between the two works?

Discuss 2 Rivers’ relief is an ironic critique of racial stereotypes (‘the blacks’= servants, ‘the whites’ = masters). How similar is his attitude to Soyinka’s? Web quest 3 Search the web for more works of art that discuss issues of racism and ethnicity, and choose the one you like best. You can either choose a visual or a verbal form. Compare it to either Rivers’ or Soyinka’s work.

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in Africa LEARNING DIGITAL J ohn Maxwell Coetzee and Waiting for the Barbarians PPT

John Maxwell Coetzee

PDF

Youth DT77 Loneliness in London

John Maxwell Coetzee (1940)

IN ACTION

Profile

They said of this…

Coetzee declined to appear in London to receive both his first and second Booker Prizes (respectively in 1983 and in 1999). He fictionalised his own life in Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002), which describe a young man’s stay in London. He left South Africa because of his hatred for apartheid, and because he was unable to bear the oppressive reality of his country. He considered the notion of colonialism at large. His country’s apartheid system and its post-apartheid transition are treated in his works, not from a political point of view, but as systems that lead human nature to a devouring passivity. The coloniser-colonised relationship often appears in Coetzee’s works. In Waiting for the Barbarians the Empire tries to construct labels – barbarians, foe – for the ‘other’, while the colonised resist such attempts. The barbarians never appear and the native people of the area simply do not fit in the role prepared for them by the Empire. This novel was followed by Life & Times of Michael K, for which Coetzee received his first Booker Prize. It describes a fictitious civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970s–80s. Foe is a reworking of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe: the narrator is Susan Barton, a castaway who lands on the same island where ‘Cruso’ and Friday live, and who realises that language can be even stronger than chains in oppressing people. In Disgrace, a post-apartheid novel, the protagonist David Lurie, a Cape Town professor, is dismissed from his job because he has an affair with a young student. He goes to his daughter Lucy’s farm, and he starts working in a dog shelter. He is unable to protect Lucy when her farm is destroyed and she is raped by three black strangers, and she chooses to make an agreement with the man who was probably an accomplice in the destruction of her farm and of her rape because it is the only way to protect herself.

The way out of apartheid In South Africa, apartheid (the policy of separation of races) lasted from 1948 to 1990. Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader and first president in the 1994 multi-racial elections, was released from prison after 27 years, where he had been sentenced to life for his opposition to apartheid. In his first public speech, outside Cape Town’s City Hall on 11th February 1990, he advocated a new future of equality and democracy for all South Africans. Today the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future. It is our belief that the future of our country can only be determined by a body which is democratically elected on a non-racial basis. There must be an end to white monopoly on political power and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratised. Universal suffrage on a common voters’ role in a united democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony. (abridged)

1 Answer the questions. 1 What was Mandela imprisoned for? 2 Is Mandela addressing only black people in his speech? 3 What steps should be taken to promote peace and racial harmony? 4 Coetzee participated in street demonstrations against the Vietnam War when he was in the USA, and this prevented him later from obtaining the American citizenship that he desired. What would you be prepared to do to fight for your rights if they were menaced? 490

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

Style A constant in Coetzee’s works is his continuous dialogue with other literary works. Waiting for the Barbarians evokes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot ( p. 464) and it takes its title from the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy’s (1863–1933) eponymous poem which ends with these words: “[…] night is here but the barbarians have not come. Some people arrived from the frontiers, And they said that there are no longer any barbarians. And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.” He also refers to Defoe, Shakespeare, Blake and Byron directly in other works. His style is concise and straight to the point, and he uses the present tense in narratives, also shifting easily from the characters’ thoughts to narrative with none of the conventional punctuation signs, in typical post-Modernist style. His language is characteristically neat and compact.

LIFE 1940 John M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and brought up in rural Cape Province.

1948 KEY FACT His parents dissociated themselves from the Afrikaner nationalist government that implemented apartheid.

1960–61 He studied and graduated in English and Mathematics at Cape Town University.

1965–69 He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, USA, in English, Linguistics, and Germanic languages.

WORKS

1968–71 He was a Professor of English at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

1977

In the Heart of the Country

1980

Waiting for the Barbarians p. 491

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

1984 KEY FACT He returned to South Africa as Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town.

1983

Life & Times of Michael K

1997

1986

1999

Foe

Boyhood Disgrace

2002 He moved to Australia, where he holds an honorary position at the university of Adelaide.

2003 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

2002

2003

Youth

Elizabeth Costello

2006 He became an Australian citizen.

2013–19

The ‘Jesus’ Trilogy

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) The novel is set in an imaginary Empire only defined in its opposition to a group of ‘barbarians’. The unnamed protagonist, a Magistrate who is used to leading a very quiet life in a frontier town, is the narrator of this ‘non-encounter’ between the Empire and the mysterious barbarians.

THE PLOT The Magistrate of a remote settlement in the Empire is looking forward to his retirement. He spends his free time looking for ruins in the desert and trying to interpret the pieces of pottery he finds. Colonel Joll, a bureaucrat sent by the ‘Third Bureau‘, the Empire Secret Service, arrives in the Magistrate’s town. People are saying that the barbarians are plotting a full-scale offensive, and Joll captures some of them. He tortures them and also kills an old man. A barbarian girl is seriously injured and almost blinded by the torture and the Magistrate hires her as a cook and maid. Later his interest in her becomes sexual, but she remains enigmatic and impenetrable. The Magistrate decides to take the girl back to her people. Back at his fort, he is arrested and accused of conspiracy with the barbarians. He demands a trial to no effect. He is tortured, beaten and starved. Eventually Mandel, who has taken the

Magistrate’s place, releases the Magistrate because he doesn’t want to feed him out of the Empire’s money any longer. The Magistrate becomes a beggar and the people in the village start trusting him again, ▲ Poster of the 2019 film version and when Mandel and most of the novel of the soldiers return to the capital, with many of the fort’s inhabitants, the Magistrate regains his former position. One day, a tired Colonel Joll returns to the settlement, but the villagers throw bricks at him and his soldiers, and they leave. The Magistrate tries to write the history of the settlement, but only manages to write a few final notes.

Interpretations • A political allegory not just of South African apartheid, but of any form of colonisation. The colonisers define themselves in terms of brutal opposition to an enemy that never appears in the novel. They remain impenetrable, distant, unknown. • A discussion of ‘the other’ and of the consequences of their existence and confrontation with them. The Empire associates the barbarians with all kinds of brutal qualities (violence, theft, murder, rape) and state they have to be eradicated. Ironically, it is the confrontation with this ‘absent presence’ – very much like Godot in Samuel Beckett’s play – in the novel that defines the Empire’s existence. The Magistrate, who has never totally given in to this view of the other, at first just because of his passivity, is restored to full humanity when he confronts the brutality against the native people. His disgrace (being imprisoned for treason, beaten, his becoming a beggar) reduces him to a state of sincere humanity. • An exploration of the dark side of man, as shown by the shocking brutality of Colonel Joll, a mere cog in the great mechanism of the Empire. He tortures his prisoners with clear determination.

Ideas for your map: COLONIALISM

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491

MIND MAP

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in Africa hatred of apartheid

general human passivity

John Maxwell Coetzee

coloniser – colonised

concise style

Waiting for the Barbarians

political allegory

discussion of ‘the other’

interaction with other literary works

exploration of the dark side of man

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

2 What characterises his style?

1 How did Coetzee relate to apartheid personally and in his works?

3 What interpretations are possible for Waiting for the Barbarians?

T84 A weak man with a conscience

Waiting for the Barbarians

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

Colonel Joll tortured an old man and his son until the man died. Now the boy is in the hut with his hands tied and the body of his father lying next to him. The Magistrate, who knows what has been going on in the hut and has heard the sounds of torture coming from it, takes his lantern and goes to see. He gives orders to the guards about the boy.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. tortures • untie • duties • immediately • corpse

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The Magistrate wants to check if the boy is all right. He tries to (1)

the rope around

the boy’s wrists. He invites the boy to tell Colonel Joll the truth when he (2)

him and

wants to know whether the boy has eaten or not. He gives orders concerning both the boy and the man’s (3)

. The Magistrate considers his (4)

and what brought him to go to the hut, though not (5)

and how he attends to them, , where the prisoners are kept.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Scene from the 2020 film adaptation of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What does the Magistrate try to do about the boy’s hands?

I hold the lantern over the boy. He has not stirred; but when I bend to touch his cheek he flinches1 and begins to tremble in long ripples that run up and down his body. “Listen to me, boy,” I say, “I am not going to harm you.” He rolls on his back and brings his bound hands up before his face. They are puffy2 and purple. I fumble at the bonds3. All my gestures in relation to this boy are awkward. “Listen: you must tell the officer the truth. That is all 5 he wants to hear from you – the truth. Once he is sure you are telling the truth he will not hurt you. But you must tell him everything you know. You must answer every question he asks you truthfully. If there is pain, do not lose heart.” Picking at the knot I have at last loosened the rope. “Rub your hands together till the blood begins to flow.” I chafe4 his hands between mine. He flexes his fingers painfully. I cannot pretend to be any better than 10 1 flinches: sobbalza 2 puffy: gonfie

492

The Cold War Age – Authors and works

3 fumble… bonds: armegggio con i lacci

4 chafe: sfrego

John Maxwell Coetzee

2 What does he order about the boy and his dead father? 3 Is the Magistrate openly forbidding the men to torture the boy again?

4 Does the Magistrate usually attend to his duties?

5 Why did the Magistrate go to the hut?

a mother comforting a child between his father’s spells of wrath. It has not escaped me that an interrogator can wear two masks, speak with two voices, one harsh, one seductive. “Has he had anything to eat this evening?” I ask the guard. “I do not know.” “Have you had anything to eat?” I ask the boy. He shakes his head. I feel my heart grow heavy. 15 I never wished to be drawn into this. Where it will end I do not know. I turn to the guard. “I am leaving now, but there are three things I want you to do. First, when the boy’s hands are better I want you to tie them again, but not so tightly that they swell. Second, I want you to leave the body where it is in the yard. Do not bring it back in. Early in the morning I will send a burial party to fetch it, and you will hand it over to them. If there are any questions, say I gave 20 the orders. Third, I want you to lock the hut now and come with me. I will get you something from the kitchen for the boy to eat, which you will bring back. Come.” I did not mean to get embroiled in this. I am a country magistrate, a responsible official in the service of the Empire, serving out my days on this lazy frontier, waiting to retire. I collect the tithes and taxes, administer the communal lands, see that the garrison is provided for, 25 supervise the junior officers who are the only officers we have here, keep an eye on trade, preside over the law-court twice a week. For the rest I watch the sun rise and set, eat and sleep and am content. When I pass away I hope to merit three lines of small print in the Imperial gazette. I have not asked for more than a quiet life in quiet times. But last year stories began to reach us from the capital of unrest among the barbarians. […] The 30 barbarian tribes were arming, the rumour went; the Empire should take precautionary measures, for there would certainly be war. Of this unrest I myself saw nothing. In private I observed that once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians. […] And officials of the Third Bureau of the Civil Guard were seen for the first time on the frontier, guardians of the State, specialists in the obscurer motions of sedition, devotees of truth, doctors 35 of interrogation. [...] If I had only handed over these two absurd prisoners to the Colonel, I reflect – “Here, Colonel, you are the specialist, see what you can make of them!” – if I had gone on a hunting trip for a few days, as I should have done, a visit up-river perhaps, and come back, and without reading it, or after skimming over it with an incurious eye, put my seal on his report, with no question about what the word investigations meant, what lay beneath it like a banshee 40 beneath a stone – if I had done the wise thing, then perhaps I might now be able to return to my hunting and hawking and placid concupiscence while waiting for the provocations to cease and the tremors along the frontier to subside. But alas, I did not ride away: for a while I stopped my ears to the noises coming from the hut by the granary where the tools are kept, then in the night 45 I took a lantern and went to see for myself.

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What are the effects of the torture on the boy? 2 What characterises the relationship between the Empire and ‘the other’, the barbarians, and what is the Magistrate’s opinion concerning it? 3 What opinion does the Magistrate have of himself and his choice? Choose all the correct options. a

He sees himself as a hero fighting for the rights of the oppressed.

He knows he has his weaknesses, and that he prefers a quiet life.

He regrets not having left before Joll started torturing the prisoners.

e knows he has made the wrong choice by visiting the boy in H the hut.

He knows that he is good only at his ordinary duties.

He intends to defy Joll’s authority by setting the boy free. DEBATE

4 Debate the statement in groups.

Real heroes and heroines openly fight against injustice. Group A believe that there cannot be heroism unless you face injustice directly and openly. Group B believe that acts of heroism can be modest and simple, and also done in secret, but are still valid. PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

493

7T HE COLD WAR AGE

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share

KEY WORDS

1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Write a short definition for each.

THINKING SKILLS

2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words for each point, or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class or with a classmate. Describe 1 NATO and the Warsaw Pact were created during the Cold War. 2 J.R.R. Tolkien revitalised the tradition of romance with his works. 3 With the ‘novel of memory’ black writers search for their roots. 4 Bradbury, Asimov and Dick wrote science fiction novels. 5 Confessional poetry focused on personal trauma. 6 Literature of the Caribbean is multi-ethnic. 7 Seamus Heaney’s poetry reflects the reality of agricultural Northern Ireland. Explain 1 The Soviet Union was dissolved after several satellite states became free from their Communist governments. 2 Doris Lessing’s works present multiple themes. 3 The writers of the Beat Generation were rebellious and unconventional. 4 Writers of the African Continent saw themselves as spokespeople of their country and its tradition. 5 Wole Soyinka rejected all extremes in interracial relationships. 6 J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians discusses issues of colonialism and otherness. Justify 1 The EU began as an economic reality in the 1950s. 2 Literature of India combines interest with society with the rich traditions of the country. 3 Didi and Gogo in Waiting for Godot are complementary characters. Compare 1 The Movement and The Group developed poetry according to contrasting principles. 2 The Theatre of the Absurd and the Angry Young Men both contributed to a renewal of drama. Assess 1 The Thatcherite Revolution was unable to modify British economy. 2 The hidden spirit of On the Road is sad rather than excited.

STORYTELLING

WRITING

3 Samwise Gamgee decides to do what Frodo asked him before leaving Middle Earth forever, and adds to the big book of The Lord of the Rings his own version of the moment Frodo learnt what the One Ring was. Write about 200 words in the first person, focusing on Sam’s feelings as he hid in the garden and overheard Frodo and Gandalf’s conversation.

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay underlining similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • The development of literature in the UK • Nature of postcolonial literature • The various realities of American literature

494

IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL

THE COLD WAR AGE

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

rebellion / protest

change / evil / salvation

communication / time

rural work / cooperation

racism / colonialism

war / violence

feminism / identity

magic realism / romance

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme of rebellion. Step 1

Read this consideration about the nature of individual rebellion and transgression:

Rebellion is when an individual or individuals refuse to obey certain standards or laws dictated by society. Step 2 Focus on the idea of rebellion, and discuss what it represents for you and how ordinary people experience it in today’s world. Step 3

Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view.

2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about rebellion. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English On the Road (Jack Kerouac, 1957)

Greek Odyssey (Homer, VIII century BCE) The rebellion of the hero against those who were usurping his rights and family.

Latin The Agricola (De vita Agricolae, Tacitus, 98 CE) Tacitus gives an account of the Iceni Queen Boudicca’s revolt against Rome, 60–61 CE.

Philosophy Henry Foucault (1954) Power and transgression in the 20th century.

French The Human Condition (La condition humaine, André Malraux, 1933). Rebellion as a necessary starting point to achieve human dignity.

Spanish The Gag (Alfonso Sastre, La mordaza, 1954) The theatre as a means to change society.

The young generation chooses rebellion and transgression as a way of living.

Art Venus of the Rags (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1967) An ancient icon of perfection is juxtaposed to the new icon of transgression.

German Daddy (Vati, Peter Schneider 1987) A young German lawyer confronts his father over his Nazi crimes.

Italian Scritti corsari (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) Pasolini condemns conformism in bourgeois society.

History 1950s uprisings in the Former Soviet satellite states. 495

THE NEW MILLENNIUM (1990–Today) THE IDEA OF THE TIME

Crisis

THINKING ROUTINE 1 What do you associate with the idea of crisis? Are they positive or negative ideas? escape / turning point / recovery / danger/help / assistance / emergency / point of no return 2 Look at the photos and answer the questions. Angels Unaware 1 What is the base of the sculpture meant to represent? 2 Is the boat relatively empty or packed with people? Why? 3 Are the migrants diversified somehow? 4 What do you think the sculpture means? Flower Thrower

Interactive analysis

5 What is the thrower wearing on his face? 6 What does he hold in his right hand? 7 What is he going to do? 8 What do you think the graffiti means? Which is which? 3 Economic (E) or personal (P) crisis, or both? 1 stagnation and depression

E P

2 uncertainty and lack of confidence

E P

3 uncertain identity

E P

Key words • crisis = the significant point in a critical situation, indicating either recovery or death/ disaster/downfall • migration = the movement of people from their country to another while seeking refuge or better life conditions 496

▲ Timothy Schmalz, Angels Unaware (2019) This six-metre-long sculpture by the Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City, depicts a group of migrants and refugees on a boat. Their clothes are different to show that they come from different moments in history and time. For example, there is a Jew fleeing Nazi Germany, a Syrian getting away from the Syrian civil war, and a Pole escaping the communist regime.

LEARNING DIGITAL I nteractive mind maps Visual mapping of key ideas Interactive ideas for your map Key ideas of contexts, authors and works Interactive texts A detailed analysis of texts

Video presentations Overviews of contexts, authors and works Emotional learning Stepping into texts through moods and emotions #BookTok Discover top trending book recommendations

PPT PowerPoint presentations A step-by-step presentation of contexts and main authors

Listening Listening tasks, tracks of all texts and of their comments

PDF

Visual analysis of texts Key features of texts made clear

Text bank Extra texts of authors In-depth bank Learning/reading more about contexts, authors and works

▼ Banksy, Flower Thrower (2003) This iconic stencil illustration by Banksy on a car wash in a suburb of Bethlehem (Palestine) depicts a person involved in a riot, armed with a bouquet of flowers instead of a firebomb.

Ideas for your map: CRISIS

p. 539

497

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Key Facts An age of crises and wars

LEARNING DIGITAL

11 September, 2001 • The Twin Towers attack • The 2008 world economic crisis • Brexit • The Covid-19 pandemic • Migration • A new Cold War? PPT

The New Millennium: History and Society

PDF

• History narrated: An age of crises and wars ( Digital resources, Study Booster) • Royal dynasties: The House of Windsor

THE US AND ISLAMIC TERRORISM Two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan; the towers collapsed, causing nearly 3,000 victims. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden. The US launched the War on Terror invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, Muslim fundamentalists. The British government gave its unconditional support to the US struggle against international terrorism, taking part in the Afghanistan (2001) and Iraqi (2003) Wars. Many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation. Between 2001 and 2004 the Arab Spring spread across much of the Middle East, in particular Libya, Syria and Tunisia, in response to oppressive regimes and low standards of living. The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror group – also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – led to a new US operation against terror.

IN ACTION Key words 1 Match each word/ expression (1-4) to the correct definition (a-d). 1

The Arab spring

recession

policies of austerity

pandemic

a a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease b a significantly long decline in economic activity c measures implemented to reduce government spending and the budget deficit d a series of anti-government uprisings and armed rebellions

498

The New Millennium – Key Facts

2008

THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS

In September 2008, the Lehman Brothers, a global financial services firm in New York, collapsed and the AIG, American International Group, the country’s largest insurance company, filed for bankruptcy. The Wall Street crisis led to a severe recession when housing prices fell by 33% and unemployment grew dramatically. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which helped to prevent a global economic catastrophe. In Europe, the European Central Bank offered a rescue package, on condition that the affected nations pursued policies of austerity.

2016

BREXIT

On June 23rd, 2016, a close majority of British people (52%) voted for Brexit (i.e. the United Kingdom leaving the European Union) after having been an EU member for 33 years. The Brexit transition period was marked by a series of meetings to negotiate Britain’s exit. The Withdrawal Agreement was approved on 24th December 2020, covering such areas as trade, fisheries, aviation and road transport, social security, UK participation in EU programmes and internal security. In the USA, January 6th 2021 marked one of the darkest episodes in American democracy with the assault on the Capitol: the White House was attacked by a crowd of former President Donald Trump’s supporters. Joe Biden, a Democrat, became the 46th American President in January 2021. In November 2024 Trump won the elections against the democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

2013-2017

2020-2023

2022-today

THE ‘MIGRATION CRISIS’

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

A NEW COLD WAR?

Migrants came along two main lines: the Eastern Mediterranean route – connecting Turkey to Greece – and the Central Mediterranean route. Poverty, hunger, political instability, war and desertification caused by climate change are some of the causes that make people abandon their countries and try to cross borders illegally. Sudden increases in migration waves can be expected as a result of growing world political instability and increased inequality.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic struck the world. It brought economic activity to a near-standstill as countries imposed tight restrictions on movement to stop the spread of the virus and abate mortality rates; it caused greater poverty among the poorest, who were disadvantaged in facing the hardships caused by the standstill of the economic activity. The development of vaccines helped to stop the spread of the pandemic, which was officially declared terminated in 2023, though variants of the virus are still developing.

Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 having established her reign as the longest in British history. Her son Charles III is the current King. That same year, Ukraine was invaded by the Russian army, after Putin had already invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. The Ukrainians fought back, supported by the EU and the US. In October 2023, Hamas, an Islamist military organisation that supports the Palestine cause with violence, launched a massive surprise attack on southern Israel, which then declared war on Hamas. This may signify that the world has entered a new Cold War, with proxy wars erupting in sensitive areas like the Balkans and the Middle East.

Ideas for your map: CRISIS

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LITERATURE AND CULTURE LEARNING DIGITAL L iterature in the New Millennium PPT

The New Millennium: Literature and Culture

PDF

• Zadie Smith, NW DT78 Faces in London •P aul Auster, The Invention of Solitude DT79 A man hidden inside • J onathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated DT80 Myself and my family

Literature in the New Millennium No common classification is possible for the immense variety of literary production in English in the present. A common label is Post-modernism, a term that conveys the distance from the practices and attitudes of early 20th century Modernism. It has been suggested that part of the literary production, especially in the US, reflects the traumatic experience of 9/11 (the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers), giving birth to a post-traumatic literature, for example the works of Jonathan Safran Foer and Don De Lillo. But new crises (the pandemic, the economic and migration crisis, the return of tensions in the world scenario) continuously modify the writers’ perception of our time.

Literature in the UK In the UK, a well-known writer is Ian McEwan (1948 p. 504), who initially wrote cruel and macabre novels, such as The Cement Garden (1978), but then turned to deep psychological problems of our time, particularly the morbid obsessions of people, their actions and feelings in moments of crisis. Enduring Love (1997) discusses two fundamental themes: the necessity of companionship, and the exploration of the human mind in a case of obsessive behaviour. Significant contributions to the novel came from writers of colonial origin, such as Zadie Smith (1975), whose NW (2012) reflects the multicultural reality of contemporary London and how its inhabitants come to terms with their mixed cultural background. However, the characters tend to be more pessimistic than those in the works of post-colonial writers living in the former colonies and dominions ( p. 502). A different approach to narrative has come from the novels of Hilary Mantel (1952–2022 p. 508), with her talent for vivid characterisation, dark humour and sharp social criticism. She became an internationally renowned writer with her historical trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and his role as adviser to King Henry VIII: Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror and the Light (2020). She was the first British writer and the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice, one for the first two books of her trilogy.

◀ Ground Zero, the memorial for the victims of the Twin Towers attack in New York

500

The New Millennium – Literature in the New Millennium

▲ Multicultural London society

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958–2023), a poet of Jamaican origin, brought poetry onto the stage with his ‘dub poems’ inspired by the music of his country of origin. Kazuo Ishiguro (1954 p. 512), a British novelist of Japanese origin, deals with themes of memories and the past, also connected to critical issues of the present such as cloning. The Remains of the Day (1989) was his first great success, followed by Never Let Me Go (2005), a novel about the act of caring and donating in an alternative dystopian 1990s.

Literature in the USA Post-modernism is particularly significant in the works of American writers, together with the concept of post-traumatic literature. Philip Roth (1933–18) depicts characters who are generally Jewish-American people in provincial towns, dissatisfied with their mediocre lives, unable to accept the materialism and vulgarity of American culture. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) relates a Jewish intellectual’s confessions to his psychiatrist, rich in revelations on subjects that are normally taboo, with obscene words and episodes, while American Pastoral (1997) explores issues such as the father-daughter relationship and familial loyalty and betrayal, always in the context of the Jewish community represented by Seymour Levov, ‘the Swede,’ and his terrorist daughter, Merry. One of the most important African-American women writers is Toni Morrison (1931–2019 p. 516), the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Her novel Beloved (1987) explores the lives of former slaves after their escape, opening in 1873 after the Civil war. It presents the psychological suffering caused by slavery, with repression of and dissociation from the past causing a fragmentation of the self, and their path towards a reintegrated sense of self-identity. The most recent American novelists, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Paul Auster and Cormac McCarthy, all reflect the fragmentation and absurdity of human life, disillusionment with science and rationality, and the disintegration of individual identity. Don DeLillo (1936 p. 526), who claims that he grew up on comic books and the radio like all Americans, has been influenced as much by jazz music as by literature. He fills his books with strange people, drop-outs, recluses, obsessives. He explores the implications of our having everything we see mediated through images derived from popular culture. The events of his greatest novel Underworld (1997) cover from the 1950s through to the 1990s, with the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear proliferation, including Russian testing grounds in Kazakhstan. Falling Man (2007) concerns Keith Neudecker, a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, and how his life changed after that. Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) has explored Jewish identity and the post-traumatic experience of the Shoah. Everything is Illuminated (2002) is built along two storylines, one about the narrator’s (Foer himself) search of the woman who saved his grandfather’s life in an extermination camp and the extermination of all the Jews in Trachimbrod, the small Jewish town of the narrator’s ancestors in Nazi-occupied eastern Poland (now Ukraine). Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) is the story of a nine-year-old child whose father died in the Twin Towers attack and his grandfather, whose traumatic losses in the Dresden bombings during WWII made him mute and later estranged him from his wife and son. Paul Auster (1947) in The New York Trilogy (1987) includes three experimental detective stories, which explore ideas of the self and often feature the author in variously explicit and veiled incarnations. The life of the protagonist of Invisible (2009) is very similar to Auster’s own, but the terrible events of the plot – which examines murder and incest – are clearly fictional. Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023 p. 520) writes novels usually set in the South, and are a fusion of Western and Modernist style most beautifully represented by Blood Meridian (1985), a fictional account of the brutality in the 1830s along the Mexican-American border. Two of his novels, No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006) were also adapted into films. The Road imagines an apocalyptic future of total destruction for mankind, but its strength lies in the father-son relationship looking for salvation and showing the nature of hope in McCarthy’s terse style. The Passenger and Stella Maris (2023) are companion novels dealing with the wife of two siblings (a boy tormented by his sister’s suicide) whose father worked in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. 501

Post-colonial literature

LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN ACTION English in action 1 Choose the correct alternative. 1 constrained = restricted / empowered 2 terse = ungrammatical / incisive 3 pawned = given in loan / as a gift

MIND MAP

Post-colonial literature from the former colonies and dominions has kept exploring notions of identity, fusing local traditions with the Western-minded approach to writing. Derek Walcott (1930–2017 p. 530) was one of the outstanding figures of Caribbean literature and the Nobel Prize winner in 1992. His epic book-length poem Omeros was published in 1990 to critical acclaim. The poem very loosely echoes Homer and some of his major characters from the Iliad. Walcott published more than twenty plays, the majority of which have been produced by the Trinidad, the national theatre. His poems and plays are about the difficulty of defining one’s identity because of mixed African and European ancestry, but also because of the loss of Caribbean culture after British colonisation. In the African Continent the voices of contemporary writers are diverse. They have abandoned such issues as slavery, the Middle Passage and the process of decolonisation to dig deep into local traditions of spirituality, storytelling and the customs of African indigenous culture including its most problematic aspects. Ben Okri (1959), a Nigerian novelist and poet, won the Booker Prize for Fiction (the youngest winner ever) for The Famished Road (1991), the first in a trilogy about a spirit child in an unnamed African city who refuses to leave the mortal realm. Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948), a Tanzanianborn British novelist and academic and 2021 Nobel-Prize winner, integrates Swahili, his native language into his works, rejecting the concept that these words are ‘alien’; English being to him as an African as much as his Swahili. His novel Paradise (1994) joins the personal vicissitudes of a Tanzanian boy, Yusuf, pawned to a merchant to pay off his father’s debts and the arrival of German troops in WWI and the forced conscription of African men as soldiers. In Canada, women writers have won international recognition thanks to their ability to explore the man-nature relationship and psychological conflict in a feminist perspective, as happens with the works of Margaret Atwood (1939 p. 534). The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) shows how dystopian literature has continually adapted to the issues of the present. The novel is a political analysis about the constrained rights of the individual in a new society, and of male-female power relations through the act of self-narration of the protagonist, one the handmaids (fertile women) of the totalitarian Republic of Gilead.

Literature in the New Millennium

Literature in the UK

Literature in the US

Post-colonial literature

Zadie Smith – multicultural London

Philip Roth – Jewish-American culture

Derek Walcott – mixed AfricanEuropean ancestry

Ian McEwan – obsessive behaviours

Don DeLillo – jazz music – popular culture

Ben Okri – Abdulrazak Gurnah

Hilary Mantel – dark humor – sharp social criticism

Jonathan Safran Foer – Jewish reality and post-traumatic experience

Benjamin Zephaniah – dub poetry

Paul Auster – experimental detective stories

Kazuo Ishiguro – memories of the past – cloning

Cormac McCarthy – Western-Modernist style

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The New Millennium – Literature in the New Millennium

Margaret Atwood – male-female relations – rights of the individual

▲ Derek Walcott in his native

island of Saint Lucia in Lesser Antilles

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What contradictions of today’s world are mirrored in contemporary literature? 2 Who are the most significant representatives of literature in the UK? Write a few notes about each.

3 Who are the most significant representatives of literature in the USA? Write a few notes about each. 4 Who are the most significant representatives of literature from the former colonies? Write a few notes about each.

Ideas for your map: CRISIS

p. 539

THE ARTS

A sculpture that loves the light Contemporary art is extremely rich and usually challenging, combining mediums and offering visitors the opportunity to interact with it and enjoy it from multiple points of view. One of the most significant works in city architecture is Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor (1954), a BritishIndian sculptor specialising in installation art and conceptual art. Its effects of diffusion and reflection of light create an ever-changing view of the city landscape.

Cloud Gate, ‘The Bean‘ (2004–06) by Anish Kapoor

▲ View A: Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park

▲ View B: Cloud Gate from a different point of view

The immense mirrored sculpture is made up of 168 stainless steel plates which play with the light and mix all the reflections of Chicago and its environment, day and night. Depending on the point of observation the mirrors can reflect the flat American plain, Lake Michigan, or the skyscrapers of Chicago. Spectators can even be part of the reflection, or walk underneath to hide everything.

▶ View C: Cloud Gate with

visitors from below

THINKING ROUTINE Web quest

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is reflected in view A? 2 What is reflected in view B? 3 Why do you think the sculpture has been lovingly nicknamed ‘The Bean’?

5 What do you think the artist may have wanted to suggest by creating this monumental sculpture based on light and reflection?

2 Search the web for unusual sculptures in our cities. Do you think that they can help you see our urban landscapes from a new perspective?

4 What is reflected in view C?

Ideas for your map: REFLECTION

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503

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK LEARNING DIGITAL

Ian McEwan (1948)

I an McEwan and Enduring Love PPT

Ian McEwan

PDF

Enduring Love: full plot

Profile Novelist, screen and short-story writer, McEwan is interested in the issues of recent history: rationalism and science, feminism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, religious fundamentalism, the consequences of 9/11 and climate change. His earlier works were dominated by a macabre atmosphere, which resulted in him being given the nickname ‘Ian the macabre’, and the presentation of shocking themes such as paedophilia, incest and murder. In The Cement Garden four orphans cover their mother’s corpse in cement in the cellar, and then slowly return to an animal state, avoiding the outside world until the climax of the novel when the authorities discover the body and the elder children having incestuous relations. In later works, such as Enduring Love or Atonement, the dark subjects were replaced with a serious study of the darkness of everyday life, presented in the moment when middle-class peace is broken by some upsetting event that determines a crisis. He observes people who fall prey to obsessive behaviour and investigates the nature of empathy, ‘to think oneself into the minds of others‘. His novels are characterised by continuous shifts between past, present and future; the linear idea of time is lost in his works.

Enduring Love (1997) Enduring Love (‘love that endures or that must be endured‘) begins with the death of a man in a hot-air balloon accident and explores its consequences in the lives of the three main characters, Joe Rose, Jed Parry and Clarissa Mellon. It is a tale of stalking, fixation and erotomania, or Clérambault’s syndrome, that is when a person lives in the delusion that someone loves him or her.

THE PLOT Joe Rose, a writer of articles for science magazines, and his partner, Clarissa Mellon, a professor of English literature, John Logan, a local doctor, and Jed Parry, a young man and a religious fanatic, try to help James Gadd save his ten-year-old nephew from being carried away in a hot-air balloon. All of them apart from John Logan let go of the balloon ropes. A strong wind carries the balloon away and John falls a great distance to his death. Jed Parry starts writing Joe long letters, leaves him messages and follows him around because he believes that they are in love. Joe visits Logan’s widow, Jean, in Oxford. She believes her husband was having an affair the day he died. Joe realises that Jed’s presence is damaging his relationship with Clarissa. While Joe, Clarissa and Clarissa’s godfather are having lunch in a restaurant, two gunmen shoot a young man at a nearby table. He is similar to Joe and in a similarly composed group – a woman and two men: Jed has sent the men to kill Joe. Joe buys a gun to protect himself but Jed takes Clarissa and confesses that his love for Joe has ruined his life. When he pulls a knife from his pocket, Joe shoots him in the arm to prevent him from killing himself. Joe and Clarissa visit Jean Logan; her suspicions about her husband’s infidelity are proved wrong. Joe realises that he is not ready yet to forgive Clarissa for doubting their relationship. 504

The New Millennium – Authors and works

LIFE 1948 Ian Russell McEwan was born in Aldershot, England. He spent most of his childhood in North Africa as his father was an army officer.

1960 He returned to England to attend a state-run boarding school in Suffolk.

1970 KEY FACT He completed an M.A. degree in English literature at the University of East Anglia. He later spent a year in Afghanistan.

WORKS

1978

The Cement Garden

IN ACTION

Themes

Which is which?

• Love

1 Clérambault’s syndrome is a form of paranoid delusion with an amorous quality involving the patient and their victim. Can you tell who the patient is, and who the victim? 1 The patient / victim believes that a person is in love with them. 2 The patient / victim has done nothing to encourage the passion. 3 The patient / victim first goes through a phase of hope and later of delusion. 4 The patient’s / victim’s behaviour is characterised by the typical elements of stalking (calls, letters, love declarations and advances). 5 The patient / victim feels anxious and even threatened. 2 How convincing is the presentation of the syndrome in the novel in your opinion?

2000 KEY FACT He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) because of his services to literature.

1978 He published his first novel, The Cement Garden.

1987

The Child in Time

1997

Enduring Love p. 504

2001

Atonement

2007

On Chesil Beach

2016

2019

The Cockroach p. 164

In a Nutshell

Love is a biological and neurological fact which cannot be avoided or controlled. It can both heal and destroy. Joe and Clarissa portray their love as a life-changing stroke of luck while Jed’s disorder-driven affection occurs as an accidental fact, the result of his encounter with Joe at the hot-air balloon accident.

• Suspicion and disloyalty Loyalty is necessary in relationships but is easily shattered by suspicion, and once lost, it is almost impossible to get back. The first crisis occurs in the hot-air balloon accident itself, when a group of strangers are unable to cooperate successfully to save the boy. The second and major crisis involves Joe and Clarissa; while he is being stalked by Jed, she doesn’t offer him the support he feels she should, while he invades her privacy by going through her correspondence to look for a reason for her lack of support. In the end it is not clear whether they will recover from their crisis. The third one concerns Jean, Dr Logan’s widow, and her suspicions concerning the disloyalty of her dead husband. When proved wrong, she blames herself for doubting him.

• Obsession Obsession is presented as a force that overcomes reason and is dangerous and destructive: Joe’s sentimental life is damaged by Jed’s stalking and an innocent person is shot in Joe’s place. Joe has given up his career as a scientist but is obsessed with the idea of going back to science and he becomes fixated with his persecutor. He can’t stop thinking about Jed Parry. MIND MAP

contemporary issues

Ian McEwan

macabre atmosphere

darkness of everyday life

love

Enduring Love

suspicion and disloyalty

obsession

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What issues of our time are present in Ian McEwan’s works? 2 How different are his earlier and later works? 3 How does he describe his characters? 4 What view of love is present in the novel Enduring Love? ▲ Poster of the 2004 film version of the novel

5 What other themes are identifiable in the novel?

Ideas for your map: OBSESSION

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T85 Co-operation

Enduring Love

Joe Rose, Clarissa Mellon, John Logan, Jed Parry and two farmers are brought together in the attempt to bring down a hot-air balloon with a ten-year-old boy in its basket. They seize some dangling ropes and start pulling together. Unfortunately, after a while, they all let go, apart from Logan. The balloon lifts up into the air.

1 Complete the summary with the given words.

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

rationalise • covenant • weight • shocked • co-operation • uneasy • rope Joe Rose tries to (1)

what happened during the hot-air balloon accident. Nobody knew

who let go of the (2)

first. What is certain is that the collective (3)

of the

people would have brought the balloon to earth in a few seconds when the wind subsided. The helpers because they had betrayed an ancient (5)

that had let go felt morally (4)

written in human nature, i.e. the necessity for (6) on how Dr Logan’s fall and death (7)

. Joe comments on what happened and the helpers.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 What did all the helpers say about the accident?

I didn’t know, nor have I ever discovered, who let go first1. I’m not prepared to accept that it was me. But everyone claims not to have been first. What is certain is that if we had not broken ranks2, our collective weight would have brought the balloon to earth a quarter of the way down the slope a few seconds later as the gust subsided3. But, as I’ve said, there was no team, there was no plan, no agreement to be broken. No failure4. So can we 5 accept that it was right, every man for himself? Were we all happy afterwards that this was a reasonable course5? We never had that comfort, for there was a deeper covenant, ancient and automatic6, written in our nature. Co-operation – the basis of our earliest hunting successes, the force behind our evolving capacity for language7, the glue8 of our social cohesion. Our misery in the aftermath9 was 10 proof that we knew we had failed ourselves. But letting go was in our nature too. Selfishness is also written on our hearts. This is our mammalian conflict10 – what to give to the others, and what to keep for yourself. Treading that line, keeping the others in check, and being kept in check by them, is what we call morality11. Hanging a few feet above the Chilterns 15 escarpment12, our crew enacted13 morality’s ancient, irresolvable dilemma: us, or me. 14 […]

1 who let go first: chi fosse stato il primo a mollare (le funi) 2 if we... ranks: se non avessimo rotto le file 3 as the gust subsided: quando la raffica si placò 4 No failure: Nessun fallimento 5 that this... course: che si trattò di uno sviluppo ragionevole (degli eventi) 6 a deeper... automatic: un patto più profondo, ancestrale e istintivo

506

The New Millennium – Authors and works

7 the force... language: la forza che sta alla base della nostra capacità di linguaggio 8 the glue: il collante 9 Our misery in the aftermath: Lo sconforto successivo 10 This is... conflict: Questo è il conflitto di noi mammiferi 11 Treading... morality: Oltrepassare quel confine, tenendo gli altri sotto controllo ed essendo da loro controllati, è ciò che noi chiamiamo moralità

12 escarpment: scarpata 13 enacted: affrontò 14 When the men who were trying to help let go of the ropes, with the sole exception of Dr Logan, the balloon lifts away westwards, with Logan dangling from his rope, while the others stand by in horrified silence.

Ian McEwan 2 How far and high was the man hanging from the rope? 3 Was the wind still blowing hard?

4 What did the narrator hear?

No exclamations, no shouted instructions as before. Mute helplessness15. He was two hundred yards away now, and perhaps three hundred feet16 above the ground. Our silence was a kind of acceptance, a death warrant17. Or it was horrified shame, because the wind had dropped, and barely stirred against our backs18. He had been on the rope so long that I began 20 to think he might stay there until the balloon drifted down. [...] Even as I had that hope we saw him slip down right to the end of the rope. And still he hung there. For two seconds, three, four. And then he let go. [...] We watched him drop. You could see the acceleration. No forgiveness, no special dispensation for flesh, or bravery, or kindness19. Only ruthless20 gravity. And from somewhere, perhaps from him, perhaps from some indifferent crow, a thin 25 squawk21 cut through the stilled22 air. He fell as he had hung, a stiff little black stick. I’ve never seen such a terrible thing as that falling man. (Abridged from Chapter 1)

15 Mute helplnessness: Muta impotenza 16 two hundred yards... three hundred feet: duecento metri... novanta metri 17 a death warrant: un mandato di morte

18 and barely... backs: e ci accarezzava appena la schiena 19 No forgiveness... kindness: Nessun perdono, nessuna dispensa speciale per quel corpo umano, a compenso

del coraggio, o come prova di benevolenza divina 20 ruthless: spietata 21 a thin squawk: un verso acuto 22 stilled: immobile

▶ Scene from the 2004 film

version of the novel with Daniel Craig as Joe Rose

ANALYSE

DEBATE

3 Answer the questions.

4 Debate the statement in groups.

1 What is the ancient principle conflicting with co-operation that is also written in human hearts?

Human behaviour is totally the result of biological drives.

2 What does the helpers’ reaction suggest about their sense of guilt? 3 What narrative technique prevails in the passage, comment or report? 4 Which words reveal that the narrator takes a rational stance towards Dr Logan’s fall?

Group A believe that people’s behaviour is automatically determined by their biological nature. Group B believe that people behave following more than just their biological drives.

PDF

Your text explained

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507

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK

Hilary Mantel (1952–2022)

LEARNING DIGITAL H ilary Mantel and Wolf Hall PPT

Hilary Mantel

PDF

Wolf Hall: full plot

Profile Mantel’s reputation as a novelist lies primarily in her historical novels. She gained international fame with Wolf Hall, an incredibly accurate and vivid reconstruction of the Tudor age with Thomas Cromwell as the protagonist. His rise and fall as Henry VIII’s advisor is at the centre of the two later novels in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light and Bring up the Bodies. Mantel’s fiction helped rehabilitate Cromwell’s image by presenting him as a brilliant and revolutionary strategist, and revealed to the wider public Mantel’s talent for psychological analysis as well as her humour. Her characters are complex and contradictory, and her precise clear prose makes it easy for readers to identify with the characters and their perspective. Her historical research was extremely accurate, too. She always checked historical evidence to make sure that the characters could have been where she imagined them engaged in dialogues and action.

Wolf Hall (2009) The protagonist of the novel is a historical figure, Thomas Cromwell. He is a lawyer with a wide knowledge of Latin and Italian, well-versed in the Classics, and serving Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII with his brilliant intelligence. The narrative follows his life from when he left his home as a teenager to the peak of his career with the King marrying his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The narrator is external but for almost all of the narrative the focalisation is assumed to be internal and coinciding with Cromwell‘s.

THE PLOT In 1500, young Thomas Cromwell seeks fortune in France as a soldier to escape his violent father. By 1527, he is a lawyer, a married man, a father of three children and the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. However, his wife and two daughters get sick and die. In 1529, the Cardinal loses King Henry VIII’s favour because he has been unable to arrange the annulment of the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cromwell tries to help the Cardinal and decides to relocate him to York. Cromwell begins negotiations on his behalf gaining favour with both the King and Anne Boleyn. The Cardinal is called back to London to face accusation but dies on the way. Cromwell threatens Henry Percy, a former lover of Anne’s, into silence when he declares that Anne is his wife. Cromwell organises the ceremony where Henry VIII makes Anne his legitimate queen. She is able to marry the King in a private ceremony and soon becomes pregnant. 508

The New Millennium – Authors and works

LIFE 1952 Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire into a working-class Roman Catholic family and attended convent school.

1970 She began her law studies at London School of Economics but completed them at the University of Sheffield.

1972 She was diagnosed with endometriosis, and was inadequately treated for it.

1977 KEY FACT She moved to Botswana with her husband, a geologist, and later to Saudi Arabia. In Botswana she started writing.

1979 She had her uterus and ovaries removed in an attempt to cure her from her condition, but the problem of chronic pain was not solved.

1987 She went back to England and worked as a film critic.

1985

2005

Every Day Is Mother’s Day

WORKS

Beyond Black

1992

2009

Wolf Hall p. 508

A Place of Greater Safety

2012 KEY FACT She was the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice (first with Wolf Hall in 2009 and then with Bring up the Bodies in 2012).

2015 She received the title of Dame Commander, the equivalent of a knighthood.

2012

Bring up the Bodies

2022 She disagreed with Brexit and moved to Ireland, but died 13 days after moving there.

2020

The Mirror and the Light

Themes

IN ACTION Look and think

• Power and deception

A king in perfect shape

Ambition, deception and hypocrisy are the essential foundations of power at court. Cromwell rises to prominence from his humble origins as the son of a blacksmith thanks to his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, who teaches him to see beyond people’s behaviour and into their real motives and to be always one step ahead of the courtiers’ intrigue. Cromwell is constantly wearing a mask to hide his real self and be invulnerable. He realises that the King has no friends at court and he makes himself his friend to become indispensable to the King, even if this means going against his own conscience and desires.

MIND MAP

historical novels

Hilary Mantel

complex contradictory characters

humour

psychological analysis ▲ After Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Henry VIII (the original portrait was lost, but copies survived).

Wolf Hall

Thomas Cromwell revisited

power – deception

1 Answer the questions. 1 What posture does the King have? 2 What kind of clothes is he wearing? 3 What does his figure convey? Choose among the following. strength

aggression

anger

fear

pride 4 How do you imagine Thomas Cromwell? Search the web for his portrait(s), and compare it/them with the King’s. Which appears more majestic?

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What kind of novels did Mantel mainly write? 2 How does she portray her characters? 3 Who does Wolf Hall focus on? 4 What are the main themes of the novel?

Ideas for your map: POWER

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T86 Life at the Tudor court

Wolf Hall

In 1527, Henry VIII has fallen in love with a woman, Anne Boleyn, and wants to have with her the male heir that his Spanish-born wife Catherine of Aragorn has not been able to give him in 20 years of marriage. He asks Cardinal Wolsey to have the marriage annulled. The Cardinal discusses it with his protégé, Thomas Cromwell.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. heir • tolerance • ironically • past • Queen • tomb

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Cardinal Wolsey has arranged for his own (1)

to be made in porphyry with angels and

inscriptions praising his virtues. He shows (2)

in religion when he is told about heretics.

He asks Cromwell about his (3) in the (4)

, and then suggests that they should have more friends

’s entourage. He also tells Cromwell that he heard the dawn mass with

Henry VIII, who is desperately trying to find a way to have a male (5) (6)

. The Cardinal

claims that it would be easier for the King to find the Philosopher’s Stone and magic

chests rather than an heir. ▲ Scene from the 2015 BBC series of the novel showing Thomas Cromwell.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What will be the eternal monument erected for the Cardinal? 2 Why does he hate violence?

Now read the extract and check your answers.

The cardinal, who thinks upon a Christian’s last end, has had his tomb designed already, by a sculptor from Florence. His corpse will lie beneath the outspread wings of angels, in a sarcophagus of porphyry. The veined stone will be his monument, when his own veins are drained by the embalmer1; when his limbs are set like marble, an inscription of his virtues will be picked out in gold. But the colleges are to be his breathing monument, working and 5 living long after he is gone: poor boys, poor scholars, carrying into the world the cardinal’s wit, his sense of wonder and of beauty, his instinct for decorum and pleasure, his finesse. No wonder he shakes his head. You don’t generally have to give an armed guard to a lawyer. The cardinal hates any show of force. He thinks it unsubtle2. Sometimes one of his people — Stephen Gardiner, let’s say — will come to him denouncing some nest of heretics in the 10 city. He will say earnestly, poor benighted3 souls. You pray for them, Stephen, and I’ll pray for them, and we’ll see if between us we can’t bring them to a better state of mind. And tell them, mend their manners, or Thomas More will get hold of them and shut them in his cellar. And all we will hear is the sound of screaming. 15 ‘Now, Thomas.’ He looks up. ‘Do you have any Spanish?’ ‘A little. Military, you know. Rough.’ ‘You took service in the Spanish armies, I thought.’ ‘French.’ ‘Ah. Indeed. And no fraternising?’ 20 ‘Not past a point. I can insult people in Castilian.’ ‘I shall bear that in mind,’ the cardinal says. ‘Your time may come. For now… I was thinking that it would be good to have more friends in the queen’s household.’

1 embalmer: imbalsamatore

510

The New Millennium – Authors and works

2 unsubtle: che dà nell’occhio

3 benighted: ignoranti

Hilary Mantel 3 Does Cromwell understand the Cardinal’s words properly? 4 What does the Cardinal need to understand about the queen?

4 unleashed: senza freni

Spies, he means. To see how she will take the news. To see what Queen Catalina will say, in private and unleashed4, when she has slipped the noose of the diplomatic Latin in which it will be broken to her that the king — after they have spent some twenty years together — 25 would like to marry another lady. Any lady. Any well-connected princess whom he thinks might give him a son. The cardinal’s chin rests on his hand; with finger and thumb, he rubs his eyes. ‘The king called me this morning,’ he says, ‘exceptionally early.’ ‘What did he want?’ 30 ‘Pity. And at such an hour. I heard a dawn Mass with him, and he talked all through it. I love the king. God knows how I love him. But sometimes my faculty of commiseration is strained.’ He raises his glass, looks over the rim. ‘Picture to yourself, Tom. Imagine this. You are a man of some thirty-five years of age. You are in good health and of a hearty appetite, you have your bowels opened every day, your joints are supple, your bones support you, 35 and in addition you are King of England. But.’ He shakes his head. ‘But! If only he wanted something simple. The Philosopher’s Stone. The elixir of youth. One of those chests that occur in stories, full of gold pieces.’ ‘And when you take some out, it just fills up again?’ ‘Exactly. Now the chest of gold I have hopes of, and the elixir, all the rest. But where shall I 40 begin looking for a son to rule his country after him?’

▲ Scene from a theatre representation of the novel at Winter Garden Theatre in New York, 2015

ANALYSE

DEBATE

3 Answer the questions.

4 Debate the statement in groups.

1 How does the Cardinal present Henry VIII? Compare his description to Henry Holbein’s portrait of the King. Is the Cardinal’s description truthful?

A good politician can serve their country’s interests better by being honest.

2 How does the narrator present the Cardinal?

Group B believe that some form of lying may be necessary to be a good politician.

3 What kind of narrator is present in the extract?

Group A believe that honesty is all you need in a good politician.

a internal / external b intrusive / non-intrusive c omniscient / non-omniscient PDF

Your text explained

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511

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK

Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)

LEARNING DIGITAL K azuo Ishiguro and Never Let Me Go PDF

Never Let Me Go: full plot

Profile Ishiguro became a writer after realising that his dream of having a successful career in music would not come true, but he has retained a great interest in music, also cooperating with jazz artists. He spent only the first five years of his life in Japan, but this made his vision of the country in his works vivid and personal as a combination of memory, imagination and speculation. Reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time influenced him in his preference for memory as something totally different from a mechanical act of recalling, but as a creative act working in non-linear time. His first works reimagined his mother’s stories of her youth in Nagasaki. His Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day is about the reminiscences of Stevens, an elderly English butler. His formality prevents him from understanding both the Nazi sympathies of his employer, Lord Darlington, and his own feelings of love for a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton. Ishiguro’s works move between the optimism inherited by the generation that had gone through the horrors of WWII, with genocides and the atomic bomb, to the creation of liberal democracies and a new era of civil rights, and the increasing anxiety of living in the present, with growing inequalities, recurring economic crises and an increase in racism. The advances of science, technology and medicine have brought new issues to the front, with new genetic technologies – such as the gene-editing technique – and advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics.

Never Let Me Go (2005) The novel is set in an alternative 1990s, mostly in the English countryside, but Ishiguro has transformed this recognisable past into a world where human clones are created only to become donors of organs. The clones keep donating their vital organs until ‘completion’ (death) occurs, and are looked after by carers, other clones who willingly choose to assist them through the various painful donations, which compromise their health. Clones usually ‘complete’ after their fourth donation. The heart of the novel is its narrator, Kathy H, a carer in particular of two of her friends, Ruth and Tommy.

THE PLOT Kathy H. has been a carer for almost twelve years, and remembers her past, especially the time spent at Hailsham, a boarding school where the teachers are known as ‘guardians’. The guardians there recommend the children to stay healthy and produce art; the best pieces are chosen by Madame for her gallery. Kathy makes friends with Ruth and Tommy, who become lovers. One day Miss Lucy, one of the guardians, tells the children that they are clones created to donate their organs and that there will be no future for them. At 16, Ruth, Tommy, and Kathy move to the Cottage, their first contact with the outside world. They discuss with other donors the rumour that says that if two donors can prove that they are really in love they can obtain a deferral, i.e. delaying the donations. 512

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There is also a rumour that if the clones make art they prove they have true souls and obtain a deferral. Kathy and Ruth’s friendship deteriorates, and Kathy applies to become a carer. Ruth makes her first donation but ‘completes’ with the second with Kathy as her carer. Kathy becomes Tommy’s carer, and they become lovers. They go to Madame hoping that Tommy’s artwork proves that they are in love, so that Tommy gets a deferral. Madame tells them that Hailsham was an experiment to prove that clones are human, but it failed, and that there are no deferrals. Tommy makes his fourth donation and completes after confronting Kathy, who becomes a donor. Kathy realises that Hailsham and her friends will always be with her in her memories, however imperfect.

LIFE 1954 KEY FACT Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He attended kindergarten there.

1960 The family moved to Britain because of Ishiguro’s father’s job. He attended the County Grammar School and completed his studies in the UK. They never returned to Japan.

1974 Ishiguro spent three months backpacking around the US and Canada.

1976–78 KEY FACT He attended university and developed an interest in both social issues and writing.

1979 KEY FACT Ishiguro attended a pioneering Master of Arts course in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The British writer Angela Carter became his personal tutor and friend.

1995

The Unconsoled

1986

An Artist of the Floating World

1982

WORKS

2017 KEY FACT He received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1983 He took up writing as his job.

A Pale View of Hills

1989

The Remains of the Day

2000

When We Were Orphans

2005

Never Let Me Go p. 512

IN ACTION

Themes

They said of this…

• Donation

Living today

The clones are brought up to give away their art pieces which represent their souls, and later to donate their organs. Similarly, the act of caring, i.e. helping a donor to face the pain of donation, is considered a sort of obligation for clones. Caring is what Kathy chooses to do when she cares for her friends Ruth and Tommy, first as friends and then for Tommy in the form of love. The memories of her caring is what give her a meaningful life. Her life is conditioned by her clone status but her emotions and those of the other donors are real and true.

The book is about our wish to do well. The children’s poignant desire – to be a ‘good carer’, then to be a ‘good donor’ – is heartbreaking. This is what traps them in their cage. None of them thinks about running away, or about revenge upon the ‘normal’ society. In Ishiguro’s world, as in our own, most people do what they’re told. Tellingly, two words recur. One is ‘normal’. The other is ‘supposed’, as in the last words of the book: ‘wherever it was that I was supposed to be going’. Who defines ‘normal’? Who tells us where we are supposed to be going? Such questions are always with us, and become crucial in times of stress.

2015

The Buried Giant

2021

Klara and the Sun

• Loss and memory Kathy is only 31 but she has lost everything: her childhood, friends and love. Loss is inevitable, and even the hope of a deferral, which would only delay the inevitable destiny of completion, is in vain. All she can hold on to are her memories, which are not always complete or correct. In her narrative she tries to reorganise them and make sense of the past. It is her telling about her life and that of the other donors that ultimately proves that the donors are fully human, much more than the failed experiment of Hailsham.

MIND MAP

▲ Poster of the 2010 film version of the novel

Kazuo Ishiguro

(From Margaret Atwood about Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go)

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is the main message of the novel according to Atwood?

interest in music

memory as a creative art

post WWII optimism vs anxieties of contemporary reality

2 What issues does she identify in the novel? 3 Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is about a dystopian world, too, but she investigates issues connected to gender and feminism. What do you think of the capacity of dystopian novels to deal with contemporary issues?

Never Let Me Go

donation – cloning

loss and memory

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What is memory for Ishiguro? 2 What two attitudes are opposed in his works? 3 What are the themes of Never Let me go?

Ideas for your map: MEMORIES

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the UK LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T87 Donating is your future

Never Let Me Go

One of the guardians at Hailsham, Miss Lucy, cannot bear the reality of the children talking about a future that they will never have and interrupts their dreaming aloud to tell them what their life will really be like.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. repeat • donors • decent • imagine • warns • better • organs • becoming

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Ideas for your map: CONSCIOUSNESS

Miss Lucy asks Peter, one of the children, to (1)

p. XXX

what he was saying with another child

so that everybody can hear it. Peter says that they were speaking of (2)

actors and

about how to have the best chances to become successful. Miss Lucy tells all the children that none of them will have the future that they (3)

because they are (4)

they are adults they will live the lives set for them; they will donate their vital (5) there will be nothing else in their future. She (6) ahead of them if they want to live a (7) feel (8) ▲ Scene from the 2010 film version of the novel

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Was Peter talking to Miss Lucy about his future?

2 Where would Peter like to go, and why?

3 What other destiny do the children imagine for themselves?

4 Why isn’t Miss Lucy like the children?

and

them that they should know that is life. She keeps staring at them and the children

only when she stops doing it.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

“Boys, you must forgive me for listening. But you were right behind me, so I couldn’t help it. Peter, why don’t you tell the others what you were saying to Gordon just now?” Peter J. looked bewildered1 and I could see him getting ready his injured innocence face. But then Miss Lucy said again, this time much more gently: 5 “Peter, go on. Please tell the others what you were just saying.” 2 Peter shrugged . “We were just talking about what it would feel like if we became actors. What sort of life it would be.” “Yes,” Miss Lucy said, “and you were saying to Gordon you’d have to go to America to stand the best chance3.” 10 Peter J. shrugged again and muttered quietly: ‘Yes, Miss Lucy.” But Miss Lucy was now moving her gaze over the lot of us. “I know you don’t mean any harm. But there’s just too much talk like this. I hear it all the time, it’s been allowed to go on, and it’s not right.” I could see more drops coming off the gutter and landing on her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. “If no one else will talk to you,” she continued, “then I will. The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, 15 but none of you really understand, and I daresay, some people are quite happy to leave it that way. But I’m not. If you’re going to have decent lives, then you’ve got to know and know properly. None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re 20 years old, before you’re even 20 middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided. So

1 looked bewildered: sembrò confuso

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The New Millennium – Authors and works

2 shrugged: scrollò le spalle

3 to stand the best chance: avere la migliore possibilità

Kazuo Ishiguro you’re not to talk that way any more. You’ll be leaving Hailsham before long, and it’s not so far off, the day you’ll be preparing for your first donations. You need to remember that. 25 If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.” Then she went silent, but my impression was that she was continuing to say things inside her head, because for some time her gaze kept roving over us4, going from face to face just as if she were still speaking to us. We were all pretty relieved when she turned to look out over 30 the playing field again. 4 her gaze kept roving over us: il suo sguardo continuava a vagare su di noi

▲ Another scene from the 2010 film adaptation of the novel

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Why doesn’t Miss Lucy urge the children to refuse the destiny that has been established for them as clones? 2 The children were ‘told and not told’. What does Miss Lucy mean? Choose all the correct options. a

T he children were told only enough to make them fit for their purpose.

T he children were never told anything clear about their lives and futures.

The children were told who they were but refused to listen to it.

3 Do the children believe Miss Lucy’s words?

INTERPRET 4 The children’s dreams of a future life seem to matter to them more than the shocking revelation of being destined to a life not of their own choice. How would you react if you were told a shocking truth that totally alters your idea of yourself and transforms your dream of a future life into an illusion?

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

Toni Morrison (1931–2019)

LEARNING DIGITAL T oni Morrison and Home PDF

Home: full plot

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Beloved DT81 Sethe’s memories

Profile Toni Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that loved storytelling, and the songs and folktales of the black tradition. During her university years she witnessed first-hand how racial hierarchy divided people of colour based on their skin tone. Her works present rural AfroAmerican communities, their cultural inheritance, and the problem of racial relationships, with a particular focus on the condition of black women, doubly repressed, firstly as blacks and secondly as women. The Bluest Eye was her first novel about self-hatred and incestuous rape in the black community. In Beloved, set in Ohio and a plantation in Kentucky, Morrison shows slavery through flashbacks and stories told by the characters. It is based on the true historical case of Margaret Garner, who killed her daughter. The narrative develops between 1855 and 1873, before and after the abolition of slavery. Morrison‘s use of fantasy and a poetic style enriches the novel, pushing it beyond the limits of traditional realism.

Home (2012) The protagonist of the novel is Frank Money, a 24-year-old Afro-American veteran struggling to maintain his sanity and find his place in the world a year after returning from the Korean War and in a highly segregated country in which Jim Crow laws (are fully in operation. He struggles with both PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and racism. The narrator is third person, but Frank occasionally speaks in the first person, contradicting what the narrator says, and recounting episodes drawn from his traumatic experiences in Korea, or vignettes from his childhood.

IN ACTION Web quest

Rewriting history After the civil rights era, Afro-American fiction explored the history of slavery, first of all with Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), a fictionalised history of seven generations traced back to Africa. Other notable examples are Ralph Ellison and his Invisible Man (1952), the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an invisible, unnamed black man and his experiences with the racial divide, and Alice Walker with The Color Purple (1982) ( p. 482). 1 Search the web to read more about these works, and present one to the class with an extract of your choice. 516

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LIFE 1931 KEY FACT Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford into a black, working-class family in Lorain, Ohio.

WORKS

1953 KEY FACT She graduated in English at Howard University (Washington, D.C.), America’s most distinguished black college. She frequently toured the segregated South with the university theatrical group.

1955 She obtained her M.A. at Cornell University in Ithaca (New York).

1957 She started teaching at Howard University, then at the State University of New York, Albany, and later at Princeton.

1964–83 She worked for the publishers Random House, New York, and helped aspiring black writers.

1993 KEY FACT She was the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1981

Tar Baby

1970

1977

The Bluest Eye

Song of Solomon

1973

1987

Beloved

1992

Sula

Jazz

2003 Love

2004

Remember

2012

Home p. 516

2008

2015

God Helped the Child

A Mercy

THE PLOT Frank Money suffers from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. He has nightmares, hallucinations, and has problems remembering his past. He is in a Seattle mental hospital, tied to his bed and drugged, and doesn’t know how or why he got there. He escapes after he receives a letter from a woman named Sarah, who urges him to come home to Lotus, his home town in Georgia, because his sister Ycidra, ‘Cee’ is in danger. They were raised by their grandmother and both were abused. Cee left home at 14 with a man who later left her. She has worked as a medical assistant

for Beauregard Scott, a white doctor and an unrepentant Confederate. His eugenic experiments on Cee have made her sterile and terribly sick. Frank takes Cee out of the doctor’s house, and they head home, where a group of healing women nurse Cee back to health with medical practices totally unlike white science. Frank comes to terms with the traumatic experiences from both his childhood and his terrible experiences in the Korean War, where he failed to save his comrades and brutally and indiscriminately killed civilians, including a little girl.

Themes • Racism The novel exposes the reality of the Jim Crow laws in the 1950s. They meant not only segregation but also medical experimentation, police brutality, property dispossession and many other cruel acts in a white dominated reality. The race of the characters is hardly ever mentioned to emphasise that all those living in that time and reality would know that the whites dominate and that the blacks submit. Frank’s trip in search of Cee is a reversal of the Great Migration that took more than one million African-Americans from the rural Deep South to the main cities in the North between 1916 and 1930.

• Home The town of Lotus is depressing. Its traumatic history reflects what the African-American population experienced. Frank and Cee escaped it, physically and psychologically, with mixed feelings of freedom and regret. The novel’s last word, ‘home‘, resolves the internal battle that has recurred throughout Cee’s and Frank’s lives. Their return to their hometown represents the reconciliation with their traumatic past and the opening of new perspectives on their devastated selves and lives. MIND MAP

songs and folktales of the black tradition

Toni Morrison

rural Afro-American communities

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

black women

Home

racism

Jim Crow laws

reconciliation with traumatic past

segregation

medical experimentation

police brutality

1 What do Morrison’s novels focus on? 2 What does Frank Money, the protagonist of Home, suffer from? 3 What are the main themes of Home?

Ideas for your map: RACISM

p. 539

517

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

T88 They stood like men

Home

Frank looks back on a day in his childhood when he and his little sister Cee witnessed something they would never forget: they saw first a fight between two horses and then some white men burying a black person.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. body • throwing • forbidden • dignity • scolded • submitted • corrects • keep out Frank and his sister Cee could not resist the temptation to crawl into a hole under the fence of a (1)

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

area full of warning signs telling them to (2)

horses standing up, fighting with violence but also with (3)

. They saw two . One of the stallions won

the fight and rounded up the mares and colts for itself while the other just (4)

. On their

way back the two children got lost, then heard some low voices and saw a group of men pulling a (5)

from a wheelbarrow and then (6)

that person into a pit. One foot

of the person was still moving when the men started shovelling the hole with dirt. Back home, Frank and Cee thought they would be (7)

, but the adults were occupied with other thoughts.

Frank addresses the narrator and (8)

his narrative. He doesn’t remember the episode

about the buried man, only the beautiful horses. ▲ A Ku Klux Klan meeting

UNDERSTAND

Now read the extract and check your answers.

They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.

2 Answer the questions.

1 How did the children react to the horses’ fight?

We shouldn’t have been anywhere near that place. Like most farmland outside Lotus, Georgia, this one here had plenty of scary warning signs. The threats hung from wire mesh fences1 with wooden stakes every fifty or so feet. But when we saw a crawl space that some animal had dug—a coyote maybe, or a coon dog—we couldn’t resist. Just kids we were. 5 The grass was shoulder high for her and waist high for me so, looking out for snakes, we crawled through it on our bellies. The reward was worth the harm grass juice and clouds of gnats did to our eyes, because there right in front of us, about fifty yards off, they stood like men. Their raised hooves2 crashing and striking, their manes3 tossing back from wild white eyes. They bit each other like dogs but when they stood, reared up on their hind legs, 10 their forelegs around the withers4 of the other, we held our breath in wonder. One was rustcolored, the other deep black, both sunny with sweat. The neighs5 were not as frightening as the silence following a kick of hind legs into the lifted lips of the opponent. Nearby, colts and mares6, indifferent, nibbled grass or looked away. Then it stopped. The rust-colored one dropped his head and pawed7 the ground while the winner loped off8 in an arc, nudging9 15 the mares before him. As we elbowed back10 through the grass looking for the dug-out place11, avoiding the line of parked trucks beyond, we lost our way. Although it took forever to re-sight the fence, neither of us panicked until we heard voices, urgent but low. I grabbed her arm and put

1 wire mesh fences: recinzioni di rete metallica 2 hooves: zoccoli 3 manes: criniere 4 withers: (qui) collo

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The New Millennium – Authors and works

5 neighs: nitriti 6 colts and mares: puledri e giumente 7 pawed: batteva gli zoccoli 8 loped off: si allontanò

9 nudging: spingendo 10 elbowed back: tornavamo indietro strisciando sui gomiti 11 dug-out place: varco

Toni Morrison

2 Was the person in the hole dead or alive? 3 Was the person white or black? 4 How did Cee react to the sight of the person in the hole? 5 What did Frank do?

6 Why didn’t the adults scold the children?

a finger to my lips. Never lifting our heads, just peeping through the grass, we saw them 20 pull a body from a wheelbarrow12 and throw it into a hole already waiting. One foot stuck up over the edge and quivered13, as though it could get out, as though with a little effort it could break through the dirt being shoveled in14. We could not see the faces of the men doing the burying, only their trousers; but we saw the edge of a spade drive the jerking15 foot down to join the rest of itself. When she saw that black foot with its creamy pink and 25 mud-streaked16 sole being whacked into the grave, her whole body began to shake. I hugged her shoulders tight and tried to pull her trembling into my own bones because, as a brother four years older, I thought I could handle it. The men were long gone and the moon was a cantaloupe17 by the time we felt safe enough to disturb even one blade of grass and move on our stomachs, searching for the scooped-out part under the fence. When we got home we 30 expected to be whipped or at least scolded for staying out so late, but the grown-ups did not notice us. Some disturbance had their attention. Since you’re set on telling my story, whatever you think and whatever you write down, know this: I really forgot about the burial. I only remembered the horses. They were so beautiful. 35 So brutal. And they stood like men.

12 wheelbarrow: carriola 13 quivered: tremava 14 the dirt being shoveled in: la terra che gli veniva buttata sopra 15 jerking: che si muoveva a scatti 16 creamy pink and mudstreaked: con la pianta rosa pallido striata di fango 17 cantaloupe: melone

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What details reveal that Frank and Cee were small children when the episode happened? 2 How does the narrator underline the contrast between the horses’ and the men’s behaviour? 3 Only the race of the person being buried in the hole is clear. How does the narrative make clear that the men are white, probably Ku Klux Klan members? 4 It is not stated why the adults did not scold the children. What is the ‘disturbance’ likely to have been? 5 Frank tells the narrator he forgot about the episode of the person in the hole. What mechanism of psychological suppression may be at work? DEBATE 4 Debate the statement in groups.

Literature is more appealing if it deals with crucial social issues. Group A claim that literary works dealing with social issues are more easily appreciated. Group B claim that their appeal lies more in their beauty than in the social issues they present.

▲ Drinking fountain only for colored people

in Halifax County in North Carolina, 1938

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA LEARNING DIGITAL C ormac McCarthy and The Road PPT

Cormac McCarthy

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Blood Meridian DT82 War endures. War is.

Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023)

IN ACTION

Profile

Key words

McCarthy had a reputation for being elusive and enigmatic, and preferred his readers to make out the meaning of his novels by themselves, rather than with authorial interpretation. Painting and cartooning were two of McCarthy’s many interests during his childhood. His passion for the visual arts can be seen in his imaginative descriptions working at a literal but also metaphorical level. He often alludes to the tradition of American Luminism. His works show the tension between human violence, or the violence of the natural world, and the community of people, however poor or inconsistent that community may be. They explore the Southern Gothic, Western and post-Apocalyptic genres and represent an evolution of the traditional idea of the regionalist writer, i.e. a writer interested in a specific area, as he moves across the US in his exploration of the concept of region as influential on a person’s identity. His first books present the South, especially Tennessee, followed by an interest in the West with Blood Meridian, a new Western, All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men, to finally return to the South with The Road. Despite its bleak setting The Road is McCarthy’s happiest book as it focuses on the sincere and overt love relationship between the father and the child. The Passenger and its companion novel Stella Maris follow Bobby and Alicia Western, two siblings whose father helped develop the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project.

1 Match each word/expression (1–2) to the correct definition (a–b). 1

Luminism

Southern Gothic

a fiction combining Gothic elements with the American South, with eccentric violent characters b 19th-century American landscape painting focusing on the effects of light and atmosphere They said of this… McCarthy was known for being very reserved and giving very few interviews, but in 2014 two students at a public school in the Tucson suburbs chose All the Pretty Horses for a project. Through a friend of McCarthy’s, they emailed the author a few questions and he answered them. 1 Your novels are full of vivid imagery and very detailed scenery description. Do you picture specific places you have been while writing? If yes, what is an example of this? Yes, and no. This is complex. I write what is in my head, in my mind. Certainly there are times when what I am writing about corresponds to a place I know well, such as west Texas and Mexico, but sometimes I have a visual image in my head that does not relate to any specific knowledge of a place. 2 You obviously have some effect in mind by not using quotation marks and routinely attributing dialogue to speakers. Would you be willing to comment on this? In an older time, writers filled pages with quotation marks, commas, semi colons, etc. supposedly to help the reader. But there comes a point where, in my opinion, they just mess up the page. I use as few diacritical marks as I can get by with. 2 Answer the questions. 1 What are the students interested in understanding? 2 How does McCarthy respond to them? 3 Does the author sound cooperative and helpful? Why do you think he accepted to answer the students’ questions even though he hardly ever gave interviews to the press?

520

The New Millennium – Authors and works

Style McCarthy was a disciple of William Faulkner ( p. 416). He makes admirable use of Faulknerian traits in his prose and choice of themes, and acknowledged Herman Melville’s Moby Dick ( p. 318) as an outstanding example for his art, together with James Joyce ( p. 360) and forgotten novelist MacKinlay Kantor, whose Andersonville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. McCarthy mentioned both Joyce and Kantor for their limited use of punctuation, one of the traits of McCarthy’s prose, reduced to the minimum for the effect of maximum clarity. From this point of view, another influential writer for McCarthy was Ernest Hemingway ( p. 422), with his extensive use of dialogue with minimal or no introductory sentences and his choice of subject matter. American landscape painting of the West is another element that influences his style, characterised by pictorial representations, which often create tableaux of still-life elements.

LIFE 1933 Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island and raised as a Roman Catholic.

1937 KEY FACT The family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee.

1951–52 McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee but abandoned his studies.

WORKS

1959 After serving in the US Air Force for four years, he went back to university, but left again and went to Chicago, where he worked as a car mechanic. 1965

The Orchard Keeper

1966 Thanks to a grant he toured Europe, settling on the island of Ibiza, a home for artists at the time.

1967 He settled in Tennessee.

1976 KEY FACT He moved to El Paso, Texas. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. Later on, he moved to Tesque, New Mexico.

1977

The Gardener’s Son

1966

Outer Dark

1979

Suttree

1985

2005

Blood Meridian

No Country for Old Men

1992

2006

All the Pretty Horses

The Road p. 521

2007 The Road won him the Pulitzer Prize.

2022

• The Passenger • Stella Maris

The Road (2006) LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Full plot

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From The Road DT83 You have to carry the fire

The Road imagines an apocalyptic future of total destruction for mankind. The land and sea are covered in darkness and ashes, nothing grows, and dead bodies litter the landscape. The two protagonists are an unnamed father and son, who go south in the hope of escaping colder and colder winters and survive, though the man knows that he won’t make it because he is sick and dying. McCarthy said that he had the inspiration for the novel when he was in a hotel room in El Paso, Texas with his 11-year-old son, who was asleep. In the middle of the night he stared out of the window wondering what the city might look like in 50 or 100 years. ‘I thought about my little boy‘, he said. McCarthy was 73 at the time.

THE PLOT The father and the son move south across a barren landscape devastated by an unspecified disaster that has destroyed almost all life on Earth. The man’s wife could not stand the apocalyptic world in which she gave birth to the child. One night she walked out alone into the dark and never returned. The man progressively coughs up more blood but hides it from the boy and struggles to protect him from cannibals, the cold and starvation. The man and the child try to avoid all contact with others as they walk along what is left of the highway with a cart full of objects and a ‘fire’ protecting them from the cold. The father has a gun but only two bullets. The boy is seized by a

bandit. The father shoots him dead and they run away. While looking for food, they discover a cellar where people are kept prisoners only to be eaten and they run away. They are starving but they find a bunker full of food, and they have time to recover. They leave with supplies in their cart and find new horrors of cannibalism on the way while their supplies quickly run out. When they finally reach the sea, the man dies and the boy remains with his father’s body for three days. A man with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, find the child and take him with them. The Road ends with a positive image of beautiful fish in the streams in the mountains.

Themes • Death Death is a constant presence in the lives of the father and the child. It is around them in the dead world, in the cold and the hunger threatening to kill them, and in the reality of the few survivors forced to search for food and most often resorting to cannibalism. The man and the boy hunt for food, and eat whatever they can find, but they hold the fire and refuse to degrade themselves into the state of cannibals. Death is also a terrible reality in the bullet that the father keeps for his own son; he would kill him rather than let the child be taken and eaten by the cannibals.

• Love and hope The man’s love for the boy is both concrete (he takes cares of him) and spiritual. He sees purity in the boy and he becomes something sacred to him. The bond of father and son is the man’s hope for the future in a world where hope seems to have died forever.

• Dystopia and the new Open Road The novel shows the dystopian sensibility which has become stronger in the Western world’s consciousness after such events as September 11th and the first wars in the Arab countries. McCarthy reinterprets the myth of the Open Road as an apparently endless exhausting journey for salvation. Moving south should bring the father and the child both a warmer climate and a hope 521

AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

of survival, but the journey worsens the condition of the father and he dies. The arrival of a family with father, mother and two children – the one reality that the son has never truly had – and the trout which ends the novel in a world where all animals are dead, seem to offer a little hope, but this is not stated clearly in the novel. The narrator lets the reader decide if the hope offered by the ending is real or illusory.

IN ACTION Look and think

What will the end of the world be like? Each age imagines the end of the world in different ways drawing inspiration from what is most central to mainstream mentality. ▶ John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath (actual title The End of The World) (1851–53). The painting represents the end of the world as described in Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, but with many sensational effects.

3 Answer the questions. 1 What colour(s) dominate(s) the painting? 2 What happens to the mountains? 3 What will happen to the small human figures at the bottom of the painting? 4 McCarthy imagines the end of the world as a grey, dark and lifeless reality. Which vision do you find most apocalyptic, the authors’ or Martin’s?

MIND MAP

visual arts – Luminism

violence of nature

Southern Gothic

Cormac McCarthy

apocalyptic genre

little punctuation – dialogue

pictorial representations

apocalyptic/ dystopian future

The Road

myth of the Open Road

father-son relationship

love – hope

death

dead world cannibalism

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What were McCarthy’s interests as a child, and how are they still present in his works? 2 What genres did he explore? 3 What literary influences can be found in his writing?

522

2 Match each sentence (1–7) to its correct half (a–g). 1

The Road imagines an apocalyptic future

a hunger and cannibalism.

Death is everywhere with the cold,

b taken and eaten.

Father and son are deeply united and hold

c of total destruction for mankind.

The father would kill his son rather than have him

d is real or illusory.

The man’s love for the boy is both

e the fire.

The novel shows the dystopian sensibility and

f the myth of the Open Road.

T he reader decides if the hope offered by the ending

g concrete and spiritual.

The New Millennium – Authors and works

Ideas for your map: APOCALYPSE

p. 539

Cormac McCarthy LEARNING DIGITAL Interactive analysis PDF

T89 Father and son

The Road

The man and the child are introduced as they wake up on a cold morning.

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. dirty • cold • moaned • month • breathing • ash • dream • guiding

EMOTIONAL LEARNING

The man wakes up and checks if the boy is still (1) woods, with just some (2) (3)

. They have been sleeping in the

blankets and a plastic tarpaulin to protect them from the

winter night. The father remembers a (4)

was holding him by the hand and (5) transparent creature was drinking there. It (6)

he has had: the child

him into a cave with a black lake. A strange and went away. The father does not know

the (7)

they are in. He checks the landscape using his binoculars but there is nothing but

grey (8)

everywhere. He speaks aloud talking about his son.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ A scene from the 2009 film adaptation of the novel.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Why does the father put his hand on his son’s breast? 2 Is there any light?

3 What is the creature like?

4 What time of the year is it? Where are the two going?

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out1 to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset2 of some cold glaucoma dimming away3 the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin4 and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east 5 for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone5 walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up6 and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues7 where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood 10 in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone8 pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching9 there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels10, its beating heart. The 15 brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan11 and turned and lurched away12 and loped13 soundlessly into the dark. With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted14 and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were 20 moving south. There’d be no surviving another winter here. When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed15 the valley below. Everything

1 he’d reach out: allungava a tentoni la mano 2 onset: inizio 3 dimming away: che oscurava 4 tarpaulin: telone cerato 5 flowstone: calcaree

6 swallowed up: inghiottiti 7 flues: camini (canali naturali) 8 rimstone: carsica 9 crouching: rannicchiata 10 bowels: budella 11 moan: lamento

12 lurched away: se ne andò via barcollando 13 loped: se ne andò a grandi passi 14 squatted: si accovacciò 15 glassed: scrutò

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AUTHORS AND WORKS Literature in the USA

paling away into the murk16. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls17 over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses 25 and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal18 over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant19. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

16 paling… murk: che impallidiva nell’oscurità

17 loose swirls: mulinelli vaganti 18 congeal: che si rapprendeva

19 warrant: garanzia/scommessa

▲ Father and son in another scene from the film version of the novel

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 What is the world of the father and the child like? 2 What does the dream mean? 3 How important are the father and the child to each other? 4 What similes does the narrator use, and to what effect? INTERPRET 4 For the father, his son is the word of God, if such a thing as God exists. What do you think the father means? Work creative 5 Imagine that the world is dying because of some disaster, either natural or man-made, but you know that there is one place where life could survive if only for few people. Write a 200-word text that focuses on the survival of a limited group – give details about who they are and especially what they feel. You can search the web to look for inspiration about this type of apocalyptic film, for example Greenland (2020). PDF

524

The New Millennium – Authors and works

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

ACROSS TIME Utopian and dystopian novels AND SPACE Utopian and dystopian novels are forms of satire which have encompassed many themes, from the belief in science and politics to the fear of totalitarianism and, more recently, mass communication. Aldous Huxley, with his novel Brave New World (1932), started to criticise the utopian values of science and the domineering political ideals of novelists such as Herbert G. Wells. In Brave New World, children are artificially bred in test tubes, and are conditioned from birth to accept the class system they live in. The protagonist, John, born in the natural way and brought up among tribal peoples (or ‘savages’ as they are labelled) outside of the dominant society, serves the author in his critique of this society. The political dystopia, perhaps inspired by the tumultuous European politics of the late-1930s and early-1940s, began to flourish. Novels such as Rex Warner’s The Aerodrome (1941) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), while set in the future, reflect worries over the rising power of Fascism and Communism. Orwell’s novel inspired many other post-war dystopias. Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962) deals with ideas of brainwashing and state control as the teenage protagonist is stripped of his freedom after he is arrested for violent and murderous behaviour. In the last thirty years of the 20th century, dystopias began to reflect dominant concerns such as consumerism and equality, and the ever-present technological world. In High Rise by James G. Ballard (1975) the residents of an ultra-modern high-rise apartment block are so isolated from the outside world by their luxurious surroundings that they abandon their sense of society and morality. In 1985, Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel that subverts the conventions of political dystopia to explore feminism, racism, Christian fundamentalism and sexuality. Atwood’s novel shows that a society based on religious fundamentalism and sexual and racial oppression will eventually founder. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) is about a near-future boarding school for clones that provide donations of vital organs for ‘normals’, or the regular population. Recent dystopias also deal with the idea of class and freedom. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008), a novel for young adults, pitches teenagers against each other in a battle to the death in a futuristic arena, overseen by the elite sections of society. There has also been the development of technological dystopias, especially in film and television. Charlie Brooker’s series Black Mirror (2011–23) depicts ‘how we might live in ten minutes time if we are clumsy’, and show the possible effects of smart phones, reality television and social networking. CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions. 1 What are the themes of utopian and dystopian novels? 2 How appealing is this genre to modern readers in your opinion?

WEB QUEST 2 Search the web to find some clips showing adaptations of utopian or dystopian novels, and choose the one that best reflects your perception of our time or how mankind’s future will be.

Ideas for your map: CRISIS

p. 539

525

AUTHORS AND WORKS

Don DeLillo

Literature in the USA

(1936)

LEARNING DIGITAL D on DeLillo and Underworld PDF

Underworld; full plot

PDF

Falling Man DT84 The towers fell. The world changed.

Profile DeLillo is an elusive writer. He rarely gives interviews and is quite indifferent to reviews. He writes fiction concerned with the secularisation of myth and ritual in mass culture in contemporary American society. His most significant sources of inspiration are jazz, foreign films and abstract Expressionism. Whether with fictional or actual characters/events, DeLillo revisits recent and contemporary American history, demystifying its rituals and behaviours. In his novels he has explored some of the topics of pop culture: football in End Zone, the effect of television in White Noise, Lee Harvey Oswald (the assassin of John F. Kennedy) in Libra, television baseball, the Cold War and excessive consumerism in Underworld. In his first novels, he focused on the absurdities and paranoias of American mass culture in cinematography, sports and popular music. The protagonists seek more authentic versions of themselves outside mass culture, but finally resign themselves to being part of it. Later novels reveal a new interest in science, games of espionage and sexual liberation. In Libra, the author follows not only the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, but the attempt of a CIA archivist to reconstruct the real story of the alleged conspiracy that used Oswald as an agent of destabilisation of the US. With Underworld, an epic novel of more than 800 pages, he explores the second half of the 20th century with many interwoven themes. The dramatic event of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers is followed in Falling Man through the vicissitudes of a family involved in the attack. The Silence deals with a ‘communications screw-up’ that causes all technology to come to an unexpected, catastrophic halt; the year is 2022, on the day of Super Bowl LVI.

Underworld (1997) Underworld is an act of memory. It starts with the so-called ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’, a 1951 baseball game where Bobby Thomson hit a game-winning home run for the Giants, and then jumps forward to the early 1990s. The rest of the novel is told in non-linear flashbacks to cover the second half of the 20th century and its obsessions. Nick Shay, the central character, is a waste-management worker who becomes obsessed with luck and failure while trying to trace the history of the baseball struck in the ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’. He pays over $34,000 to own the 1951 baseball. In addition to Nick, the novel features Nick’s lovers, family, friends and colleagues, and also historical characters such as Frank Sinatra, Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover. Through these seemingly disconnected narratives, DeLillo paints a picture of Cold War paranoia at its peak. IN ACTION Which is which?

Frank Sinatra

1 Match each famous person (1–3) to their profession (a–c). You can search the web if you are not sure of your answers.

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The New Millennium – Authors and works

Lenny Bruce

J. Edgar Hoover a an American FBI director b an American singer and actor c an irreverent American comic and social satirist during the 1950s and early ’60s

LIFE 1936 KEY FACT Donald Richard DeLillo grew up in a working-class Italian Catholic family in the Bronx, New York City. At high school his main interest was sports.

1952 KEY FACT He took a summer job as a parking attendant and he started reading, mostly modernist writers like William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Flannery O’Connor.

1958 He graduated from Fordham University in the Bronx in communication arts.

1964 After resigning from his position in an advertising company he took to active writing.

1975 He married Barbara Bennett, a landscape designer.

1972

WORKS

End Zone

1978 He used the funds of the Guggenheim Fellowship to travel around the Middle East, and then to settle in Greece.

1985 KEY FACT He returned to the USA. He published White Noise, an instant success, and numerous awards followed. He lives with his wife in Bronxville in New York City. 1988 1985

White Noise

Libra

1991

Mao II

1997

Underworld p. 526

2007

Falling Man

2020

The Silence

THE PLOT In the prologue, during the ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’, a home run by Bobby Thomson on October 3, 1951, a young black fan named Cotter Martin catches the winning ball while J. Edgar Hoover is informed of the first Soviet test of the hydrogen bomb. The novel then shifts to 1992 (Part 1): Nick Shay’s wife, Marian, is having an affair with his colleague, Brian Glassic. It is revealed that Nick killed a man when he was a teenager, and that his father disappeared when Nick was a child. In a flashback to 1951, Cotter Martin’s father takes the winning ball from his son with the intention of selling it. In Part 2 (late 1980s and early 1990s), Marian begins her affair with Brian, while Nick acquires the winning ball. In the Bronx, Sister Edgar, who was Nick Shay’s Catholic school teacher in the 1950s, works among the non-religious poor and sick. In Part 3 (spring of 1978), Nick attends a waste-management

conference in the Mojave Desert while Marvin Lundy traces the winning ball to San Francisco. Part 4 (summer of 1974) focuses on Klara Sax, an artist in New York City, and Matt Shay, Nick’s brother, a scientist in the nuclear weapons programme in New Mexico. Part 5 (the 1950s and 1960s) sees Nick Shay in juvenile detention. In another flashback, Cotter Martin’s father sells his winning ball to Charles Wainright, a white fan standing outside Yankee Stadium. In Part 6 (fall of 1951 to the summer of 1952), Nick Shay accidentally kills his friend George Manza. In the epilogue, Nick and Brian travel to Kazakhstan to watch a demo of a new waste-disposal system that incinerates the waste with a nuclear explosion. Esmeralda is raped and murdered. Her image then miraculously appears on a billboard. Sister Edgar dies shortly after witnessing the miracle.

Themes

IN ACTION Web quest

The Watergate scandal In 1972, the Watergate scandal involved the administration of President Richard Nixon, who resigned to avoid impeachment after his attempt to cover up the scandal following the attempt to break into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office-apartmenthotel complex in Washington. Two journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, were fed leaks by an anonymous source they referred to as ‘Deep Throat’. Their story is told in All the President’s Men, a 1976 film.

The novel explores multiple themes: the threat of nuclear destruction hanging over America during the Cold War, from the Soviet Union’s successful detonation of a nuclear bomb in 1951 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the fear of communist infiltration, widespread rising consumerism, the vehement opposition to the Vietnam War (1955–75), media coverage of racial discrimination and of the violence against African Americans during the civil rights movement, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King during the 1960s, and the Watergate scandal. The American economy was booming. Waste products and mountains of garbage were becoming a symbol of wealth. The characters in the novel are obsessed with consumerism and consumption, but this consumerism threatens to destroy them. In the long flashback of the novel, the facade of 1950s America crumbles, revealing the ‘underworld’ of American culture. When confronted with catastrophe – the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, the chemical attacks in the Vietnam War, nuclear waste being destroyed during underground explosions in Kazakhstan – most characters carry on blindly sticking to what is traditional. Audiences laugh when American comedian Lenny Bruce hits them with his punch line, ‘We’re all gonna die!‘

2 Search the web to find information concerning the scandal and watch some clips of the film. What impression do you get of 1970s US?

Ideas for your map: AMERICANNESS

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527

IN ACTION Look and think

The shot that America celebrates

▼ The 1999 commemorative

stamp about the ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’.

Symbols: baseball and food In the prologue, baseball is the game that brings all Americans together regardless of race or socio-economic status. People meet in the streets to listen to or watch the game in millions, and it symbolises Americanness. The game-winning home run by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in New York City on October 3, 1951, is called the ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’. The game was the first one to be televised nationally and also heard on the radio by millions of Americans. When Cotter Martin catches the home run ball, it symbolises hope, but each different owner of the ball gives it a different meaning: for Nick Shay, it symbolises defeat. Food in the novel is a commodity, something to be bought and sold. It is often prepackaged and so even more removed from the natural order. Even the ‘natural’ food Nick eats – radishes and ‘lifestyle’ salads – are indicators of his wealth, and therefore part of his consumerism. Only the two artists, Klara and Ismael, really enjoy food. Their work elevates them from society’s ‘underworld’.

Style The author’s approach to this complex narrative is cinematic. He moves from character to character, from vignette to vignette, often resorting to flashbacks, and the unity of the novel is created by juxtaposition and contrast, with little interest in the traditional development of plot. His dialogues are particularly engaging and show his love for the cinema and his ear for American language. 3 Answer the questions. 1 What does the stamp represent?

MIND MAP

2 What is at the forefront, and what effect is created around it? 3 What aspect of the event does the stamp intend to celebrate? 4 Do you think that sports can help people to develop a sense of national identity? Why?/Why not?

mass culture

Don DeLillo

absurdities and paranoias

jazz – foreign films – Abstract Expressionism

nuclear destruction

communist infliltration

science – espionage – sexual liberation

consumerism

racial discrimination

Underworld

cinematic approach

baseball – food

CHECK OUT 1 Answer the questions.

2 What themes has he explored in his novels?

1 What do DeLillo’s novels concern, and how does he deal with American history?

3 What are the main themes of Underworld? 4 What do baseball and food represent?

T90 The ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’, a baseball and a nuclear bomb 98 Underworld

LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

Visual analysis

528

The ‘Shot Heard ’Round the World’ is underway; among the bystanders there is John Edgar Hoover. A real character from American history, he was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1935 until his death in 1972. He is considering the impact that the announcement of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear explosion will have on Americans.

The New Millennium – Authors and works

Don DeLillo STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. hit • control • announcement • persuade • bomb • watching

EMOTIONAL LEARNING The ball is (1)

and the action starts, with the players moving as the ball flies. Edward

Hoover is (2)

the baseball game; he knows that President Truman is going to make the

(3)

about the first Soviet nuclear (4)

, but he is staying at the stadium.

Although Hoover doesn’t like Truman as a President, he thinks that the announcement will (5)

public opinion that the American government is in (6)

of the situation.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions.

1 What are the crowd doing? 2 Why isn’t Hoover going to leave the baseball stadium? 3 Who’s ‘We’ in Hoover’s thoughts?

The difference comes when the ball is hit. Then nothing is the same. The men are moving, coming out of their crouches1, and everything submits to the pebble-skip of the ball, to rotations and backspins and airstreams. There are drag coefficients2. There are trailing vortices. There are things that apply unrepeatably, muscle memory and pumping blood and jots of dust, the narrative that lives in the spaces of the official play-by-play3. And the crowd is also in this lost space, the 5 crowd made over in that one-thousandth of a second when the bat4 and the baseball are in contact. A rustle of murmurs and curses, people breathing soft moans, their faces changing as the play unrolls across the grassy scan5. John Edgar Hoover stands among them. He is watching from the wide aisle at the head of the ramp. He has told Rafferty he will remain at the game. No purpose served by his leaving. The White House will make the announcement in less than an 10 hour. Edgar hates Harry Truman6, he would like to see him writhing7 on a parquet floor, felled by chest pains, but he can hardly fault the President’s timing. By announcing first, we prevent the Soviets from putting their own sweet spin on the event. And we ease public anxiety to some degree. People will understand that we’ve maintained control of the news if not of the bomb. This is no small subject of concern. Edgar looks at the faces around him, open and hopeful. 15 He wants to feel a compatriot’s nearness and affinity. All these people formed by language and climate and popular songs and breakfast foods and the jokes they tell and the cars they drive have never had anything in common so much as this, that they are sitting in the furrow of destruction. […] His ulcer kicks up of course. But there is that side of him, that part of him that depends on the strength of the enemy. 20 (Abridged from the Prologue)

1 crouches: posizioni 2 drag coefficients: coefficienti di resistenza 3 play-by-play: telecronaca 4 bat: mazza

5 grassy scan: nel territorio buono, l’area di lancio valida 6 La presidenza di Harry Truman coincise con l’inizio della Guerra Fredda contro l’Unione

Sovietica, con l’intento, secondo la ‘Truman doctrine’ di contrastare la diffusione del comunismo nel mondo. 7 writhing: contorcersi

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions.

1 The baseball being hit with the bat is the crucial event of the game. How does the narrator present it in ll. 1–5?

T he feeling of anxiety that the age of the nuclear threat is introducing in ritual baseball celebrations of 1950s America.

His personal fear of death.

is thoughts are not really his, as he identifies with the words of H President Truman in his future announcement.

2 The narrator identifies the spectators at the baseball game as Americans. How does he convey a sense of unity for the crowd of spectators, and what is their mood? 3 How is the nuclear bomb that the Soviets are about to explode present in the baseball game? 4 What do Hoover’s thoughts reveal? Choose all the correct options. a

e speaks as the FBI director and voices his belief that they (‘we’) H are still in control of the situation.

5 What two focalisations are present in the extract? INTERPRET 4 Baseball is presented as a powerful identity maker for Americans. Is there a similar reality, in sports or culture, in your country? PDF

Your text explained

Digital resources, Study Booster

529

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-colonial literature

Derek Walcott (1930–2017)

LEARNING DIGITAL D erek Walcott and Omeros PDF

Sea Grapes DT85 Love After Love

IN ACTION

Profile

Across time and space

As a young man, Walcott trained as a painter, but then studied to become a dramatist and a poet, strongly influenced by Modernist poets such as Thomas S. Eliot. His works exalted the beauty and wonder of the natural world in the Caribbean but also criticised the loss of the traditional, rural way of life for a consumeristic mentality. Much of his verse deals with the Caribbeans‘ place in the world and how to heal the wounds caused by slavery. He tried to understand the relationship between the multiracial and multicultural Caribbean and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In particular, he explored in detail the state of being mixed-race, having both black and white ancestry (both his grandmothers were probably descendants of black slaves). Poetry was to him a healing tool and a means to learn more about himself and reconcile himself to his past. Walcott’s first collection of poetry, Sea Grapes, deals with the changing phases of his life. In the opening poem, the homeward-bound voyage of a Caribbean schooner is transposed into that of Odysseus, returning to Ithaca after the Trojan War. The collection shows Walcott’s typical interest in the fusion of cultures, but another main concern are the human experiences of love, death and grief. His style reveals a very fine ear for dialogue, but he was also influenced by the religious language of his Methodist upbringing. The same fusion of Caribbean and Western culture characterises Omeros, a long epic which retells Homer’s epics in a St Lucian setting and revisits Joyce’s Ulysses ( p. 360), Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Divine Comedy. In his quest for identity Walcott pacifies his and his people’s confusion about which culture they should recognise – Caribbean, African, British, American – by deciding to create a new version, a true hybrid with the best of each component.

A multiracial-cultural reality After Christopher Columbus landed on the Caribbean in 1492, the Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish and English fought over the domination of the Lesser Antilles. A common feature to all the islands is the colonial past based on a slave plantation economy. The groups living on the island were the white elite, enslaved Africans, free people of colour, and the Kalinagos, an indigenous people. Today there are Spanish, French and English-speaking Caribbean, and also their religions differ, from Catholic, the majority, to a minority of other faiths. 1 Answer the questions. 1 What European powers colonised the Lesser Antilles over the centuries? 2 What ethnic groups were present on the islands? 3 How important do you think this heritage was to Walcott?

Omeros (1990) Written in Dante’s ‘terza rima’, the poem covers only one day, like Joyce’s Ulysses, but the characters travel back and forth in time and space. It is structured as an odyssey, extending much beyond the Mediterranean Sea, and covering all the routes of the slave trade. It shifts from the present-day Caribbean, some time after independence, to modern day Europe, from the first 17th-century slave raids on the coast of West Africa, to the 19th-century American Midwest during westward expansion and the 1782 Battle of the Saintes between France and Great Britain that imposed British dominion on the island. Omeros both acknowledges its debt to earlier European epics and condemns Homeric themes of war and violence as they reinforce the defence of colonialism and the slave trade. It presents modern Caribbean history as a traumatic and conflictual crossroads at which indigenous Caribbean people encountered African slaves and European colonists, who conscripted them into forced labour on sugar plantations. 530

The New Millennium – Authors and works

LIFE 1930 KEY FACT Derek Walcott was born into a Methodist, Englishspeaking family on the island of St Lucia, Lesser Antilles.

1953 He obtained his bachelor’s degree at the University College of the West Indies, Mona. He trained as a painter, and then studied as a poet and dramatist.

1961 KEY FACT He founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.

1965

WORKS

The Castaway and Other Poems

1976 He started teaching in the USA, where he held a number of teaching positions in American universities.

1976

Sea Grapes

1992 KEY FACT He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1990

2000

Omeros p. 530

Tiepolo’s Hound

The characters and their mythical significance Hector and Achille are Caribbean fishermen, descendants of African slaves. They fight over Helen, a beautiful house servant, who is the lover of both men. She is pregnant but she doesn’t know from which man. The fight for her represents the battle for colonial domination between the European powers, and Helen’s oscillations between Achille and Hector parallel St Lucia’s troublesome adoption of a new culture. The conflict between Achille and Hector also signifies the battle between the traditional and the modern; Achille lives according to the island’s customs and is proud of his African origins, while Hector abandons his activity as a fisherman to go into business. In the end, Helen deserts Achille for Hector, confirming Achille’s belief that ‘everything is money‘. A second line of development is connected with Major Plunkett, an English veteran of the North African Campaigns of World War II, and his wife, Maud, an Irish migrant to the Caribbean, and their attempt to reconcile themselves with white people’s past of colonisation and slavery on the island. Walcott himself appears in the poem as a narrator of mixed origins, who is restored to optimism by Omeros himself at the end of the poem.

MIND MAP

painter – poet – St Lucia

Caribbean natural world

Derek Walcott

Transatlantic Slave Trade

love – death – grief

Omeros

long-epic poem

quest for identity Hector – Achilles – Caribbean fishermen traditional vs modern culture Helen

◀ Tropical landscape

on the island of St Lucia

CHECK OUT

oscillation between different cultures

3 What is the structure of Omeros like?

1 Answer the questions.

4 How does the poem relate to primary epics?

1 Which themes are present in Walcott’s poetry?

5 How do Hector, Achille and Helen relate to each other?

2 What characterised his style?

6 How is cultural identity achieved for Walcott?

Ideas for your map: COLONIALISM

p. 539

531

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-colonial literature LEARNING DIGITAL PDF

• Visual analysis • Translation

STEP IN

T91 The fight over Helen

Omeros

Hector and Achille are half-brothers (they have the same mother), but they have chosen different lifestyles. Hector has chosen modernity, Achille the traditional way of life of Caribbean natives. They both love Helen, who stands for St Lucia itself, their country. A small incident – Achille takes a bailing tin from Hector’s canoe – leads them to a duel on the shining beach of St Lucia, with the villagers and the sea as observers.

1 Complete the summary with the given words. beach • fishermen • moves back • tears • villagers • fight

EMOTIONAL LEARNING On the (1)

, in the shallows, Hector and Achille, two (2)

, fight over a

bailing tin, which Achille has taken from his half-brother’s boat. Hector begins the (3) He has a cutlass, and attacks first, running against Achille, who (4) (5)

Achille’s shirt as he strikes at him. All the (6)

. He witness the fight.

Now read the extract and check your answers.

Hector came out from the shade. And Achille, the Epic fight moment he saw him carrying the cutlass1, un homme fou, a madman eaten with envy, replaced the tin 5

he had borrowed from Hector’s canoe neatly back in the prow of Hector’s boat. Then Achille, who had had enough of this madman, wiped and hefted2 his own blade.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 How does Hector feel? 2 What does Achille do as he sees Hector?

And now the villagers emerged from the green shade Caribbean nature of the almonds and wax-leaved manchineels3, for the face-off4 that Hector wanted. Achille walked off and waited 10

at the warm shallow’s edge5. Hector strode towards him. The villagers followed, as the surf6 abated The surf and the fight its sound, its fear cowering7 at the beach’s rim.

Then, far out at sea, in a sparkling shower arrows of rain arched from the emerald breakwater8 15 of the reef, the shafts9 travelling with clear power in the sun, and behind them, ranged for the slaughter, stood villagers, shouting, with a sound like the shoal10, and hoisting11 arms to the light. Hector ran, splashing in shallows mixed with the drizzle, towards Achille, 20 his cutlass lifted. The surf, in anger, gnashing its tail12 like a foaming dogfight13. Men can kill

1 cutlass: sciabola da abbordaggio 2 hefted: soppesò 3 manchineels: mancinelle (o piante della morte, piante velenose originarie dei Caraibi e zone simili)

532

4 face-off: confronto 5 shallow’s edge: sul limitare della pozza poco profonda 6 surf: spuma dell’onda 7 cowering: che si faceva piccola piccola

The New Millennium – Authors and works

8 breakwater: frangiflutti 9 shafts: raggi 10 shoal: banco di pesci 11 hoisting: sollevando

12 gnashing its tail: digrignando la sua coda 13 foaming dogfight: cane con la bava alla bocca (‘dogfight’ è anche una zuffa)

Derek Walcott their own brothers in rage, but the madman who tore Achille’s undershirt from one shoulder also tore at his heart. The rage that he felt against Hector 25 14 bailing tin: lattina da pesca 15 crusted with rust: tutta arrugginita

was shame. To go crazy for an old bailing tin14 crusted with rust15! The duel of these fishermen was over a shadow and its name was Helen.

3 How does Achille feel? 4 Is the bailing tin the real cause of their fight?

(From Chapter 3, Part 1)

ANALYSE

INTERPRET

3 Answer the questions.

4 Answer the questions.

1 Who/What else, apart the villagers, metaphorically participates in the fight?

1 What qualifies the face-off between the two fishermen as an epic fight? Think of Hector and Achilles in the Trojan War, and of the beginning of the Iliad: “Cantami, o Diva, del pelide Achille/l’ira funesta”.

2 Caribbean nature is a constant presence in Walcott’s poem. How is it presented in the extract?

2 How similar is Walcott’s struggle with heritage in Omeros to Joyce’s in Ulysses in your opinion? PDF

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The Song of Achilles (2011) by Madeline Miller Madeline Miller is an American novelist. She studied Classics at university and has been a high school teacher of Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare for over fifteen years. She also studied in the Drama department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical works to modern forms. The Song of Achilles, her first novel, was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012.

A modern version of the Iliad Set in Greece at the time of the Trojan War, The song of Achilles is interestingly told from the point of view of Patroclus, who only appears as a minor character in Homer’s poem. This coming-of-age story tells about the relationship between the teenage first-person narrator and his soul-mate Achilles. Through Patroclus’ eyes, we are able to follow the making of a great hero and see all his hidden traits. While staying true to the original classic work, this YA novel has everything you would expect from Greek epic poetry: war, glory, a great love story, the sacrifice it involves and, finally, redemption.

“

I really enjoyed Miller’s brilliant retelling of this famous epic poem and most of my enthusiasm was due to the focus on the tender relationship between the two protagonists, which really made it impossible to put down the book. Although I’ve never been a fan of Greek mythology, this novel encouraged me to look into the original text, which I found much easier to understand after reading this fresh, well-written version of it.

“

ut fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. B What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.

DISCUSS 1 Watch the video and listen to Caleb’s review of the book and answer the questions. 1 Do you think soulmates should share the same features or have very different personalities to complete each other?

WEB QUEST / MEDIATION 2 Search the web to find more information about the novel and prepare a multimedia presentation to illustrate the links with Walcott’s Omeros.

2 What makes a great hero in today’s world? 533

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-colonial literature LEARNING DIGITAL M argaret Atwood and The Handmaid’s Tale PPT

Margaret Atwood

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The Handmaid’s Tale: full plot

Margaret Atwood (1939)

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Atwood is a short-story writer, a poet and a novelist, as well as an activist. Her novels usually have women as protagonists. They are strong-willed individuals, living enigmatic experiences in conditions of great pressure and facing issues of male-female power relations. Her early reading years were full of novels of space and superheroes as she declared in her collection of essays In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011), and much of her fiction can be seen as ‘speculative fiction’. Following the distinction made by Robert Heinlein (1907–88), the author of sci-fi classics such as Starship Troopers (1960) or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), Atwood prefers the term ‘speculative fiction’ for her works as she includes only elements that already exist in the world, such as genetic engineering, rather than purely imaginary realities like time travel or alien creatures. Her ‘MaddAddam’ trilogy is set in a postapocalyptic scenario where genetic modification and medical experimentation have made enormous progress but are threatening human and animal existence. Her works also explore the concept of Canadian identity, which she sees as tied up in the concept of survival against numerous enemies, both human and animal, and in the concept of community.

Speculative fiction is not fantasy fiction, as it rules out the use of anything as material which violates established scientific fact, laws of nature, call it what you will, i.e. it must [be] possible to the universe as we know it. (Robert Heinlein, sci-fi writer)

1 Answer the questions. 1 What is not acceptable in speculative fiction? 2 Have you read any works which may classify as fantasy and as speculative fiction according to Heinlein? What elements characterised them? 3 Is there anything in The Handmaid’s Tale that would disqualify the work as speculative fiction?

▶ Scene from the 2017 TV series

of Margaret Atwood’s novel

The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) The setting of the novel is the Republic of Gilead, a brutal sexist fundamentalist theocracy dominated by males and afflicted by general infertility as the result of dramatic climate change. The Eyes and the Guardians (spies and controllers) maintain the order in the Republic, and suppress any form of resistance. The protagonist and the narrator is a Handmaid, Offred, a woman who is forced to have sex once a month, in the moments of highest fertility, for reproductive purposes with a Commander (a man of power) with his sterile wife watching. The end of Offred’s narrative is left deliberately vague, leaving the reader with a sense of uncertainty concerning the Handmaids’ tale (a deliberate homage to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales). The Testaments, Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was released in 2019. 534

The New Millennium – Authors and works

LIFE 1939 Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and moved to Toronto when she was seven.

1962 She took her Master’s degree at Radcliffe College, Massachusetts.

1964–65 She started teaching English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. After that she held various posts in Montreal and Alberta.

1972 KEY FACT She became a full-time writer.

1981 She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

1985

The Handmaid’s Tale p. 534

WORKS

1996 She won the Booker Prize with Alias Grace.

1988

Cat’s Eye

1996

Alias Grace

1999

Disgrace

1997

Boyhood

2000 She won the Booker Prize with The Blind Assassin.

2019 She won the Booker Prize with The Testament, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

2000

2019

The Blind Assassin

The Testament

2003

Oryx and Crake

THE PLOT Offred’s narration alternates between her present life and memories of her past. She used to attend university, was married and had a daughter. This evidence of her fertility made her a Handmaid when a military coup brought about the creation of the Republic of Gilead. In her third assignment as a Handmaid, she is supposed to bear children to Commander Fred Waterford (hence her name, ‘Of Fred’) and his wife Serena Joy. Offred talks to Ofglen (another Handmaid and her neighbour), who tells her about the resistance against Gilead. Nick, a Guardian and the Commander’s chauffeur, tells her that the

Commander wants to see her in private. He wants to play Scrabble, and they keep meeting at night. He also takes her to an unofficial sex-club. Serena suspects that her husband is sterile and arranges for Offred to have sex with Nick. Offred starts enjoying being with Nick. She learns that Ofglen killed herself to avoid being taken by the Eyes. The Eyes come to arrest Offred, but Nick tells her that the Eyes are actually resistance fighters. Offred is taken away in the Eyes’ van. The epilogue explains that a 2195 symposium about the past Gileadean theocracy studies the tape cassettes which contain Offred’s story.

Themes • Male-female power roles In the Gileadean Republic, men have deprived women of their rights as individuals and use them as sex slaves. Women are not allowed to work, to have money or a bank account, and if fertile, they are forced to have sex to give birth to children that will belong to their Commander and his Wife. Women are organised into rigid classes distinguished by the colour of their dresses. The childless Wives of the Commanders wear blue, the housekeeping Marthas green, the Aunts in charge of the Red Centre (where women are ‘re-educated‘ to become Handmaids) wear khaki, while the Handmaids, fertile women used for reproduction, wear red dresses with a white bonnet. The Handmaids’ loss of individuality is marked by the loss of their Christian names. They are identified as ‘belonging’ to a Commander (Offred is ‘Of Fred’). When a Handmaid is at the peak of her reproductive cycle, she is forced to have sex in order to conceive and when a baby is born, a complex ritual with all the Handmaids confirms that the child belongs to the Wife. Men totally dominate the Republic in their roles of Commanders and Guardians. Everybody is constantly spied on, under the surveillance of the Eyes.

MIND MAP

women as protagonists

Margaret Atwood

speculative fiction

CHECK OUT

Canadian identity

theocracy of Gilead

1 Answer the questions. 1 What themes are present in Atwood’s speculative fiction novels?

3 What characterises the male-female power roles?

2 What features does the Republic of Gilead have?

4 What distinguishes the Handmaids?

The Handmaid’s Tale

male-female power roles

Ideas for your map: WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Handmaids as sexual slaves

p. 539

535

AUTHORS AND WORKS Post-colonial literature LEARNING DIGITAL

T92 A handmaid in red

100

The Handmaid’s Tale

Offred is in her room in the Commander’s house and considers her situation.

Interactive analysis PDF

Visual analysis

STEP IN

1 Complete the summary with the given words. sunlight • gloves • walks down • bell • room

EMOTIONAL LEARNING Offred looks around the (1)

. There is a bed, a chair, a watercolour picture, and a window

from which the (2)

enters. She considers her condition as a ‘prisoner’. She can hear the ringing, and gets up out of the chair. She puts on her (4)

(3)

her shopping basket and (5)

, picks up

the stairs to the hall.

Now read the extract and check your answers. ◀ Elizabeth Moss as Offred in the TV series.

UNDERSTAND 2 Answer the questions. 1 Why can’t Offred think too much? 2 What is strange about the window?

3 What colour are her shoes and gloves? Why? 4 Can she decide what to wear?

A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread. Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is 5 shatterproof1. It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes2, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge3. [...] But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed4. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as 10 Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or. The bell that measures time is ringing. Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries. As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors. I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pick them up, pull them onto my hands, finger by finger. Everything except the wings around my face is red: 15 the colour of blood, which defines us. The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue5; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen. I never looked good in red, it’s not my colour. I pick up the shopping basket, put it over my arm. The door of the room – not my room, I refuse to say my – is not locked. In fact it doesn’t 20 shut properly. I go out into the polished hallway, which has a runner down the centre, dusty pink. Like a path through the forest, like a carpet for royalty, it shows me the way. […] (Abridged from Chapter 2)

1 shatterproof: infrangibile 2 It’s those other escapes: si riferisce al suicidio come modo di fuga

3 given a cutting edge: se hai in mano qualcosa di tagliente

4 these are not to be dismissed: non si devono ignorare

ANALYSE 3 Answer the questions. 1 Which details of the room and of her clothing reveal that Offred is a prisoner in a world oppressing femininity? 536

5 prescribed issue: questione regolamentata

INTERPRET 4 Offred’s resistance is first of all mental and spiritual. Do you think that she is a good role model for women who may go through adverse circumstances?

2 What does Offred appreciate most? 3 Is Offred remissive or combative?

The New Millennium – Authors and works

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StoryTelling Future thinking • Axel and Vectra are ‘two AIs (Androids) which have been trained in AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) through algorithms (mathematical instructions)’. They share thoughts about the latest things they have learnt and pose some interesting questions about the future.

IMPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS Vectra Axel, I’m astonished. I thought that humans lived in perpetual happiness. But the more I learn, the more I realise they are experiencing a never-ending crisis. Take, for instance, two novels, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. In both novels the characters find themselves in a world which is dehumanised and fearful. They have no free will. Axel I guess that’s because they reflect the troubled times humans are living in and the increasing anxiety they feel about their present and future… There are things I just can‘t make it out ... Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale chooses to rebel against Gilead’s totalitarian society, but the protagonists of Never Let Me Go submit to their fate of clones doomed. Vectra They’re the victims of experimentation of ruthless people who want to have total control over a group of their fellow men and women. I wonder why authors write such books and people read them… Axel: Well, to stimulate readers’ critical thinking about today’s world. As we have learnt, literature has helped shape ideas and civilisations, stimulate change and innovation. It reflects society, its values and its vices. Vectra Uhm… This makes me think of ourselves, Axel… Are we going to be a value or a vice for human society? Vectra Who does it depend on? Us or them?

Axel Well, we can be both, Vectra. It all depends on what our creators will do with us. We can become very helpful or very dangerous.

Axel That’s too early to say yet, Vectra. Maybe soon…

DIGITAL STORYTELLING • Imagine that Vectra and Axel deal with another topic of conversation. It can be any issue (history, literature, art) concerning the period you have studied in this chapter. Write the imaginary conversation between them keeping in mind their AI condition.

AI ACTIVITY

Write some questions about the future and ask them to an AI chatbot. What does it answer about its own future? Take notes and share them with the rest of the class, then compare.

537

8 THE NEW MILLENNIUM

REVISION AREA Learn, collaborate, share

KEY WORDS

1 Work in pairs, and write a list of ten words that best identify the period. Write a short definition for each.

THINKING SKILLS

2 You are going to use a variety of thinking skills helpful for your study. Go through the examples in ‘How to develop my thinking skills’ ( Digital resources), and then do the tasks. Write between 40 and 80 words or present them orally. Share what you have done with your class or with a classmate. Describe 1 In 2016 the UK voted in favour of Brexit. 2 Contemporary literature reflects the many crises of our age. 3 McEwan’s novels explore themes of obsession and moments of crisis in the characters’ lives. 4 McCarthy’s novels fuse Southern Gothic, Western and post-apocalyptic genres. Explain 1 The 2008 economic crisis involved the US first and then the whole world. 2 Ishiguro’s novels deal with themes of cloning and forced organ donation. 3 Roth’s novels deal with the reality of Jewish-American identity. 4 Walcott’s poetry reflects the multi-ethnic reality of the Caribbean. Justify 1 The War on Terror was launched because of Islamic terrorism. 2 Underworld by DeLillo is a complex analysis of contemporary American identity and society. 3 The figure of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall by Mantel is rehabilitated. 4 Morrison’s Home shows the reality of racism. Compare 1 Never Let me Go by Ishiguro and The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood are both dystopian novels. 2 Both Roth and DeLillo discuss the nature of Americanness today. Assess 1 The migrant crisis is the greatest emergency of our time. 2 Salvation is certainly possible in The Road by McCarthy.

STORYTELLING

WRITING

3 Imagine you are the son in The Road; you decide to write a letter to the mother you have never met telling her about your life now and your hope for the future. Write your letter in about 150 words.

4 Choose one of these areas and write a 200-word essay underlining similarities and differences among the various works. Give evidence. • Post traumatic literature • Apocalyptic novels

538

IDEAS FOR YOUR MAP Colloquio Esame di Stato LEARNING DIGITAL

THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Go to the map store to discover suggestions on more ideas

crisis / apocalypse

racism

colonialism

power

reflection

Americanness

obsession / memories

women’s rights

PROJECT 1 Do the following tasks about the theme of crisis / apocalypse. Step 1

Read this consideration about the nature of crisis:

‘The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis’. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity’ (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) Step 2 Focus on the idea of crisis, and discuss what it represents for you and how ordinary people experience it in today’s world. Step 3

Make a presentation of the most shared views, and choose an image to represent each view.

2 Use the suggestions in the map below to prepare your colloquio about crisis / apocalypse. Talk for about five minutes, making suitable links among the different subjects. English The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) Economics The 2008 economic crisis The post Covid-19 pandemic crisis

Philosophy Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) The concept of crisis is concerned with the philosophical themes of time and death, and the crises of our times are primarily those of the meaning of life and the world.

French Michel Houellebecq (1956) The turn of the millennium coincided with a number of tangible crises and apocalyptic discourses, with the growth of the mass media and global market, further generating and manipulating crisis.

Spanish The Sleeping Voice (La voz dormida, Dulce Chacón, 2002) The story of a group of imprisoned women during Franco’s dictatorship.

Father and son move across a devastated landscape

Art For the Love of God (Damien Hirst, 2007) A controversial work, it represents the contradiction of adorning a skull with diamonds.

History The Cuban missile crisis The 9/11 Twin Towers

Italian Alda Merini (1931–2009) Personal crisis in a sensitive individual’s life.

German How to Tell My Mother (Wie sage ich es meiner Mutter, Wladimir Kaminer, 2022) The problem to tell the crisis of contemporary times to old generations.

539

Responsabile editoriale Simona Franzoni Responsabile di progetto e coordinamento Simona Pisauri Revisione linguistica Rebecca Raynes Redazione Rebecca Raynes, Simona Bagalà Coordinamento redazionale Marco Mauri Art director Enrica Bologni Progetto grafico Enrica Bologni Impaginazione Marinella Carzaniga Copertina Enrica Bologni Immagine di copertina Il fondo: Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. William Blake. c.1786 In primo piano: Scena tratta da “Sogno di una notte di mezza estate” regia: Andrea Chiodi attori: Igor Horvat e Anahì Traversi Prima Internazionale: 09.09.2021 LAC Lugano © LAC Lugano - Studio Pagi

Referenze iconografiche Alamy: 22 centro, basso; 23 basso; 28; 29; 35 sinistra; 37 sinistra; 38; 46 sinistra; 53 destra; 56; 57; 61; 77; 87 alto destra; 89; 94; 95; 99; 103; 107; 114; 115; 122; 123; 124 alto destra; 126; 128; 129 alto; 135; 137; 144; 145; 147; 151; 156 basso destra; 157 basso destra; 162; 164 sinistra; 173; 185; 191; 216; 220 alto; 225; 227; 230 basso; 231; 240; 241; 244; 245 alto; 249; 257; 259; 263; 271; 272; 275; 280 alto destra; 280 basso destra; 281 alto destra; 281 basso destra; 283; 286 alto; 288; 289; 295; 296; 299; 301; 306; 309; 311; 312; 316; 320; 321; 323; 326 basso; 333; 335; 338; 344 alto; 345; 346; 347 alto; 347 basso; 351; 353; 364; 366; 368; 370; 372; 395; 401; 402; 404 basso; 405; 412 basso; 413; 314; 315; 424; 443; 449 sinistra; 451 sinistra; 457; 459; 465; 469; 476; 477; 488; 492; 499 alto; 499 basso; 507; 509; 510; 514; 515; 523; 524; 526; 534; 536; 539 Bridgeman Images: 489 Gettyimages: 251 alto sinistra; 253 alto; 265 sinistra; 332; 347 centro; 349; 355; 377 basso sinistra; 385; 387; 394; 409; 410; 422 basso; 432 basso; 444; 445; 447; 450; 452 alto; 640 alto; 461; 466; 470 alto; 471; 474; 475; 478 alto; 482 alto; 485 alto; 490 sinistra; 495 basso; 502; 511; 520 Kienitz Michael: 431 Shutterstock: 18; 21 alto; 22 alto; 23 alto; 32; 36; 42; 43; 50; 74; 76; 79; 80; 83; 90; 96 sinistra; 101; 112; 119; 124 alto sinistra; 125; 127 sinistra; 132 alto; 138; 139; 141; 180; 187; 188; 194; 195; 196 alto; 197; 210; 336; 219 alto; 223; 226; 251 basso; 253 basso; 269; 277; 279 basso; 294; 325; 328 alto; 329; 334 basso; 354; 358; 364; 380; 389; 392; 398; 399; 306; 419; 429; 453; 456 sinistra; 462; 470 basso; 480; 481; 482 basso; 487; 496; 497; 498; 499; 500; 503 sinistra; 506; 508 alto; 529; 530 sinistra; 531; 532; 537

L’Editore ringrazia: - la Prof.ssa Alessandra Brunetti per le pagine di Storytelling e per aver dato l’autorizzazione alla rielaborazione di alcuni suoi contenuti editoriali. - la Prof.ssa Valentina Chen per la scelta delle opere dei BookTok e la realizzazione dei testi in pagina e di quelli in video. - le Prof.sse Grazia Cerulli, Valentina Chen, Giovanna Da Villa ed Enrica Florian per il loro prezioso contributo e gli utili consigli.

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