Contemporary english topic PDF

Title Contemporary english topic
Course Comparative english literature
Institution Università degli Studi di Catania
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argomenti di letteratura inglese da esporre in lingua all'esame di letteratura...


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Ted Hughes Modernismo Rushdie e historiographic metafiction Casualty di Heaney Tyresia di Elliot Son and lovers di Lawrence William Golding “il signore delle mosche” Virginia Woolf Dylan Thomas Huxley

Ted Hughes: is remembered in relation to Silvia Plaph, beyond this it must be said however that Ted Hughes was an important poet before knowing Silvia Plaph, he continues to write during the years of marriage with Silvia by which among other things he has two children, After Silvia’s suicide he won’t write any more poems for about 3 years, he will be in some way committed to defend itself from the accusation of having caused it in some way this suicide, but he will continue to write poetry and practically for the whole of his production both the one before and after the suicide of Sivia Plaph will also receive a series of awards and is still considered one of the most important poets of the second half of the 900 English. He also has a high level education, he has a university education that leads him on the one hand to the knowledge of the classics but he also studies anthropology because the study of uses, customs, myths goes to characterize the culture of populations that are different from the white population purely western; the study of the culture, the traditions of these populations will find a precise outlet also in its poetic production.

Modernism: is used as a generic label to indicate the dominant trend of the arts of the 20th century, much of the writing that we call modern is not really, there are modern and contemporary writers, modernism tends to propose difficulties for other arts, is considered art of the new tradition, modernism is experimental, formally complex, elliptical, contains elements of destruction and creation, combines ideas of the artist’s reality from materialism with notions of apocalypse and cultural disaster, the movement is avant-garde; his idea is the idea of a futurist artist, not a conservator of culture, the audience is silly but possibly redeemable. Artists are the antennae of the entire human race, they catch the signs of novelty and change but the multitude will never trust the great artists of the time. There is not a unique idea of

reality but fragmented because fragmented is the ego, from the fragments the artist tries to establish the order. Modernism involves upsetting the realistic surface of literature through subterranean forces. There’s the will and the need to experiment to express through the means the fragmentation of reality.

Rushdie: He was born in the British Raj, in Bombay, but his parents came from what was now the nation of Pakistan, they belonged to the good bourgeoisie and they are able to ensure a good education for their son, then he can study in educational institutions located in the territories of the former British Raj, the teachers are British also because the official language is English, for Rushdie is a kind of native language even if he speaks regional languages. He completed his education in England and began his career as a writer; his production was very extensive, including novels, short stories, essays, pieces of journalistic character. The real success comes in the 80s with the publication of "The children of midnight", extraordinary text for the richness of the design, the structural plan of the work that moves on different levels, the number of characters that enter the narrative, it is a historiographic meta fiction and magic realism, an important text of post-colonial literature (it includes national or regional varieties of post-colonial literature). Historiographic meta fiction was created by Linda Hutchon, a Canadian critic of Italian origins, she compared, studied and analyzed important writings and essays of authors in comparative optics, it indicates a series of post-colonial works in which the story is recovered in the same way as other narrative elements, fantastic, narrative internal to the narrative itself, this strand is a kind of post-modern contemporary development of the historical novel, the difference is that in the historical novel the story as historical events is used to graft the narrative on imaginary characters. In midnight children events are there as well as historical figures and characters but are treated as other narrative elements, it makes the reader aware of the choices that are made. Reference is made to a protest rally on the conquest of independence of India, the narrator knows that the protest took place a few days before but indicated a different date because it is functional to the story he is telling. Casualty di Heaney: The Irish matter related to poetry, bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, when the British caused millions of deaths among civilians, the bomb was put in a pub frequented by Protestants, it is a real colonization that you have in Ireland thanks to the government of Cromwell, you have to wait for 1922 for the independence of Ireland but it is not a total independence because it is still linked to England and there is no representative of the Irish provinces, 1949 will see the proclamation of the Republic of Ireland but leaves out the northern territories, there is a highly divided population, the Anglo-Irish Protestants descended from the invaders of previous centuries linked to England and then the Irish Catholics, the clashes between the two sides become devastating and there will be a civil war, the IRA fighting against paramilitary groups, which will last a long time with tragic consequences; political and economic issues in Northern Ireland. The strongest part is the Protestant one while the Catholics are in trouble, then you will come to a truce that always risks jumping from one moment to the next. “Casualty” or victim, is the title of the poem, was written in 1972 and was inspired by what had been a real event that was the accidental death of one of his acquaintances, not exactly a friend, he knew him, who had happened a few days after that Bloody Sunday, which had seen the death of

several innocent civilians by the British occupation troops in the Alsta, in Belfast, on 30 January 1972; There was just this Sunday of blood with further repercussions and this man that the poet knows and who dies, jumps into the air, is a sort of accidental victim, in the sense that he had nothing to do with the activities of the armed revolt. He remembers it in what used to be a scene, reminds this man in the pub and says the poet used to drink alone and lift a thumb to the shelf asking for a high rum with currant syrup without having to raise his voice or order a type of strong and dark beer, by simply raising your eyes. At closing time he used to leave, he is a Fisherman so in the work clothes of the Fisherman there are rubber boots that can be used not only on the boat but also as rain, so at closing time he used to go in these boots and the hat with a visor in the dark rainy, is a fisherman but with his job could not support himself and the family, so he is a worker who also supports himself with subsidies, are state subsidies, It is true that he needs these subsidies but he was a man who was born to work, he is not a slob, one who lives on state subsidies, unemployment benefits but does not commit to anything, he was born to work. He had a firm foot, that is, firmly planted, all his ways were not improvised, but they were solidly planted, they are established and have a very secure base of support. In the break after a sip he mentioned the poem, when this happened we were on our own. Always cautious because the poetry that the one practices, the other does not understand and can be a complicated speech but they are cautious also because the general climate is not from tranquility, We are in the Alsta and they speak to each other but without that one or the other adopts towards his interlocutor an air of superiority and therefore just a condescending tone. I want to use some trick to slide the speech on the eels; when we begin to talk about poetry that is a minefield for the fisherman because he doesn’t know, so that the poet does so, but without adopting an air of superiority, he made sure to slide the discourse on eels or on the knowledge of the horse and the cart or only on the extremists of the IRA or anyway the poet is saying that he makes sure to split the speech from the poem going on other topics that can be more familiar to his interlocutor. But my uncertain art also observes his shoulders turned and then was blown up while he was out drinking during curfew, others obeyed three nights after they had killed him by shooting the 13 men in London Dery, town of the Alsta; the walls said parath 13 where the parath are the paramilitaries, they are the organized individuals of the IRA which is revolutionary army but certainly not legal so precisely paramilitaries; both sides are those on the side of the Protestants then paramilitary, 13 were the dead on the side of the Irish Catholic revolutionaries while on the Protestant side there was none; that Wednesday all held their breath and trembled, The fact actually happened on Sunday but then just a few days later there is the death of this fisherman that we will see blow up in the next tests. Tyresia di Elliott: it’s a mythological figure, an ordinary man is passing in a forest where he finds two snakes copulating, with his stick tries to separate them. It follows its change from man to woman, he lives female experiences even sexual. After some time he returns to the same place and again drives away the two snakes, he returns man. Just because Tyresia has lived both as a man and as a woman when the question is asked who between man and woman enjoys the most he answers the woman. The mother of the gods condemns him for the answer and blinds him. Jupiter cannot give sight to Tyresia can however compensate by giving him the sight but not with the eyes, giving him the gift of foresight, hence the ability to be a soothsayer. Elliott’s Tyresia has knowledge of the

present, past, and future. According to Elliott Tyresia is a central figure precisely because it brings together the possibility of knowing human experience in all its complexity. Lawrence "Son and lovers" is considered by critics as the best work along with "women in love". It reconstructs the family story of Lawrence himself, set in a village in the Nottingham chair where Lawrence had lived his childhood, mining center, in which he describes, condemns the irresistible ugliness, the houses were all equal, squalid, built by the mining company for miners to be close, inhumanity, ugliness of industrialized society, critical of industrialization and the effects it produces, debilitating man, the ugliness of the environment in which individuals live, the ugliness of the very life of individuals, the representation of the clash between the Morel lords, the dominant figure Mrs Morel, strong but extremely rigid woman who after falling in love with her husband rejects everything, fracture for cultural diversity, character, rigid religious education that returns forcefully, house soul but tyrant, the attitude of the sons lined up for the mother against the father, if the aspirations first were on the first child then the attention shifts to Paul the other son who will not live autonomously his life, then he falls in love with the young Miriam and then with Clara. The relationship between Miriam and Paul is opposed because Miriam has the same characteristics of his mother, as she Miriam wants an absolute, spiritual vampire relationship with her children as well as Miriam who wants a relationship that sees her at the center of everything, then Paul and Miriam will break after having sexual intercourse in a natural landscape strongly symbolic to which Miriam bent, for she was an act of love but which conceives as sacrifice, sacrificed her virginity for the love of Paul. Instead Clara is a married woman, she works in the same factory where Paul works, he has artistic ambitions but he will bend his ambitions working in the factory where he draws the motifs that are reproduced on the fabrics, he will do a non creative job to earn a living, she has a crisis with her husband, aspects of sexual satisfaction that she had not had with Miriam, Clara is sincerely in love with Paul but he uses it to win emancipation from the sexual point of view, when the husband returns he gives the wife back to him, what Clara wants is not taken into account. Miriam and Clara live love as a physical relationship, both are functional to the emancipation of Paul, Paul would not have emancipated if his mother had not died, illness and then death, it is the same Paul that chokes the mother with a pillow although it is not clear. He’s free then to leave that world; he’s free to try his way, he’s free to try to be a true artist.

William Golding: Postwar II, he had numerous awards, and had the Nobel Prize in the 80s, "lord of the flies", dystopian dimension, backwards training novel published in 1954, a group of young people following an air disaster find themselves in a remote island, abandoned to themselves in the face of the need to survive they try to organize themselves and they will be corrupted by absolute evil by the lord of flies, they perform rituals that will bring them to death, the surviving boys will be brought back to the civilian world with a ship; experience has marked and changed them and revealed the evils in the soul of man. It uncovers the evil inherent in the human soul as Conrad has highlighted the evil in the mind of civilized man. He was born in 1911 and died in 1993, his writing path was rather long, there was an attempt to fit into the vein of magic realism.

Virginia Woolf: She was born in 1882, late Victorian period, is in full modernism, uses the stream of consciousness, is born in a high context, daughter of an art critic, the father was an important character in late Victorian London, parents come out of failed marital experiences, they already have other children, between Virginia’s half-brothers and Vanessa, her sister one has abused her, the father is authoritarian, typical Victorian patriarch, has a dominant role within the family, the Victorian mother angel who mitigates her authoritarianism; the mother will die when she enters adolescence, the father will be more closed and authoritarian, when the father dies she will be 20 years old, she studies in a cultured and refined environment, the house was frequented by prominent people, Virginia will always be unhappy because it is not allowed to have a path of study comparable to that of the brothers, will be educated at home, uses the library of the father, she will study Greek thanks to Walter Peter’s sister, she will be resentful towards her father because women have to play the role of domestic angel, she will have to work to get rid of the idea of the Victorian angel who feels the need to choke. Once she reaches maturity she rebels against this ideal, after the death of his father she moves to Bloomsbury, she forms the Bloomsbury group, is part of it Foster, then Virginia will meet Mr Walt, marry and merge the Hoggart press, very fine publishing house, introduces him to a series of prominent figures in literature, she refuses to publish other authors such as Joyce, his writing may touch on aspects of life and reality too low and vulgar; through the Hoggart press passes the narrative and non-fiction publication of Virginia Woolf, she also writes critical essays collected in the common reader; through the essays we see how she stands towards the production of other contemporary authors, she focuses on aspects not recognized by the official critics, writes an essay on Mary Wollstoncraft, author forgotten and condemned for her revolutionary ideas, rediscovered the figure of writer and woman. She captures the originality of Wollstoncraft’s writing and thinking, and thanks to Virginia she will be considered the mother of feminism. Production of Virginia between essays, biography and novel, flash romance biography of Elisabeth browning, story of love and art of Barrett through the perspective of the puppy, a cocker spaniel. Dylan Thomas: the good night is the death dedicated to the now elderly father, don’t go soft inside that night, is urging him not to let go to death, does not use the adverb Gently but the adjective gentle. Theme of death that is not to be accepted with resignation but men must rebel, it is a complex poetry for the construction of the game of rhymes , villanel, has popular origins but is interpreted in a cultured key, verses are pentameters iambic, there are only two rhymes, plays of sounds, for Thomas the sound of the word prevails over the meaning of the word. He has enjoyed a remarkable success, identified with the bard of ancient traditions, he refers to the traditions of Welsh poetry; he is considered an instinctive poet who does poetry in a natural way, but in reality he does poetry smoothing the line in a maniacal way, is a continuous process of revision to create sound effects. He is fascinated by the words for their sound, refers to the lullabies, nursery rhymes that he heard recited by adults and he loved them without understanding their meaning. He was seen as the poet yearning for life in all manifestations and excesses as drinks that made him an alcoholic, ungovernable individual, attention to the sounds and words that made him an extraordinary declamator, he died in strange circumstances, was in the United States for a tour to make readings of his poems, after drinking then they found him dead, was not called the police but they got rid of the body because according to his wife Kateline Macnamara there was a conspiracy

and they got rid of him. He wrote an autobiography that takes up the title of the autobiography joysiana, portrait of the artist as a young dog, radiodrama under the milk forest broadcast by the BBC only after the death of Dylan Thomas, Set in a village in Wales on the daily vicissitudes of humble characters, what struck the public was the fascination of language and the atmosphere of life in a Welsh village of the inhabitants who live in contact with nature, rich nature. Huxly came from a family of scientists and writers, technology and science are abused. The writing questions itself and highlights the risks of its flawed science and technology, including the mass media. He puts together the elements of his journey in this novel that comes out in 1932, modernist period, correspond to the label of the age of anxiety, collection of eclogues with strong influence of Auden, he puts under examination the contemporary period, others use it in a broader sense applying it to the first 900 and until the Second World War; the 1930s are a complex period, there are a series of crises, authors like Woolf, Joyce, Elliott it is as if they were in an ivory tower, they have a critical attitude towards reality but it is not the task of the man or woman of letters to intervene on that reality, their primary interest is art and they dedicate themselves to it in this ivory tower. Young authors of the 1930s but belong to a different generation than the previous ones, in relation to society they pose in a problematic way but also with the attitude of those who propose something concrete to change that society, political and social commitment factor, the crisis of 29 had repercussions in Europe and led to the Great Depression, a period of economic and social suffering, the unemployed, the desperate, even the First World War had left a legacy, In Russia after the capture of the tsar, following the Bolshevik revolution, there had been the communist regime with Lenin and then Stalin. The illusions about a government of the people, a government in which the most humble classes could have a dignified life, in the end it was an illusion; the affirmation of totalitarian regimes of the right, in Spain the Franco power, in Italy Mussolini and fascism, in Germany Hitler and Nazism; the authors of the 1930s need to speak with the instrument of literature; Huxly enters the political debate, Brave new world doesn’t refer to a particular political regime. Huxly, the role of literature and literature vision not as a neutral tool but as a commitment to a society in which evils must be denounced; sc...


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