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AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: The French Revolution was in 1789 and the three main features were freedom, equality and brotherhood.  The American Revolution was made to obtain the independence (the king in Britain was George III, at the end of the 7 years war the government had lots of debts, so there wa...

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AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: 

The French Revolution was in 1789 and the three main features were freedom, equality and brotherhood.  The American Revolution was made to obtain the independence (the king in Britain was George III, at the end of the 7 years war the government had lots of debts, so there was more taxation on the colonies, and this caused the Boston tea party). The population was divided in Royalists (who were against the independence, they had money and an army, but they didn’t know the land) and the Patriots (they were for the independence, they didn’t have a big army, but they knew the land very well and, helped by the French, they won). {England recognised the independence after the Treaty of Versailles, 1783}  The industrial revolution: there were new inventions like the spinning Jenny, the water frame and the steam engine. There was an increasing demand of food and clothes because of the increasing population, so new factories were built, people moved from the countryside to the cities and the consequential lack of good sanitary conditions caused illnesses. The workers worked in the mines, they had long-working hours, low-wages and the exploitation of children and women was very common. In these years there was also the birth of Trade union and the birth of Labour party.  The agrarian revolution, about this revolution was typical the selective breeding of cattle, the crop rotation, the mechanization and the enclosure of open fields.

ROMANTICISM The Romanticism is a sort of reaction to the enlightenment. In this movement feelings and emotions are very important, and the imagination which is linked to childhood (children have lots of imagination) and the nature are also very important. Nature has two essential aspects: -it’s a source of inspiration, feelings and emotions -there’s a pantheistic view of nature, nature is in fact the representation of god. In nature there is an individual, who’s a man that lives in a state of solitude (people are in contact with nature and take inspiration from it, not from other people). Nature teaches man to live and behave in a moral way, the idea is that life is a natural event and so we must follow nature’s rules. We are a part of nature, she is in contact with all the human beings. There is also the theme of the rebel outcast, so rebels, that are against the progress and the industrial society, are present. Another theme is the sublime which is a mixture between fear and astonishment. The sublime was also a source of inspiration for the gothic novel. A GOTHIC NOVEL -characters: ghosts, vampires, ugly creatures, monsters -usually the setting is an old castle/ruined abbey or generally mysterious places, during autumns or winters during the night or foggy rainy days. -in a gothic novel there’s a link with the sublime: people are afraid because there are strange creatures, but they’re also attracted to them because they don’t know them. -the use of supernatural elements is typical of a gothic novel. -the 1st gothic novel was “the castle of Otranto” written by Horace Walpole. -AIM: the idea of being scared and attracted at the same time  link with the sublime. N.B! Frankenstein is a gothic novel for these aspects but it’s also NOT a gothic novel because there is the use of science.

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) He was born in London into a humble family He studied in a drawing school and then he attended the royal academy of art. He was a painter, a graver and an illuminated. He became a writer later; he was inspired by his brother and by his wife and also by the Bible He supported the French revolution; but during the period of terror he became disillusioned; he remains a rebel because he was for the population and against slavery. He became famous as a writer after his death and so he earned only thanks to his paints. HIS MAIN IDEAS: He was against slavery and exploitation of workers According to him, the poet was able to go deeply into reality: Blake wanted to warn people of the evils of the industrial revolution He criticized society (which makes him a PREromantic) and for him imagination was very important. HIS MAIN COLLECTIONS:  Songs of innocence: it’s about childhood and imagination. Children are pure and innocent. There are white and bright colours, and everything is not contaminated by society (=virtues) There is a shepherd, he tells the story and is inspired by a child that is in a cloud playing the flute. The idea is to celebrate god The collection is written before the fall (=Adamo and Eva) and before the French revolution.  Songs of experience: it’s about adulthood, there is less imagination and less purity. There are more vices, the colours are red and dark The storyteller is a bard who questions the different aspects of songs of innocence. Here the purity of the divine creation is revealed as corrupted by the hypocrisy of the society. BLAKE’S THEORY is that the two are COMPLEMENTARY OPPOSITES S.I. ad S.E. show the two contrary but interdependent states of the human soul and they both cannot be fully understood if not considered as a whole. THE LAMB The rhyme scheme is regular (aa bb cc); there are alliterations and repetitions that create a soft sound. The setting is in the countryside, so in contact with nature and there are bright and white colours. The lamb is representation of god: god became a child and the poet has the same imagination of a child. This imagination is pure and for this reason the poet is linked to the lamb. The questions of the child to the lamb are about the existence of god and the creation of the world. The child can easily answer them because of his imagination; therefore a child, rather than an adult, knows the secret of the creation. THE TYGER The rhyme scheme is aa bb cc. The setting is in the forest where there are dark and red colours because of the fire (linked with hell). There are two different types of god: 1 created the lamb, in fact songs in of innocence God is considered like a good father, and the other created the tiger, in fact in songs of existence God is seen like a judge.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) He was born in the Lake district -in England He lived during the romanticism and the revolutions He graduated at Cambridge He travelled to Italy, France and Switzerland on a walking tour He settled in France, he supported the French Revolution and he married Annette Vallon. During the period of terror, he became disillusioned and returned to lake district He lived with his sister Dorothy, who was his source of inspiration, and Coleridge. When Coleridge became drugs and alcohol addicted, he split up their friendship because it was against morality He became “poet Laureate” = a kind of prize for his poems MAIN WORKS Lyrical ballades with Coleridge The Preface = manifesto of romanticism A lot of poems (we are seven) MAIN IDEAS He was interested in the interaction between man and nature Man is inseparable from nature NATURE Nature is a source of inspiration, feelings and emotions (also sublime) It teaches men to live and behave in a moral way It’s in contact with all the human beings So, there’s a pantheistic view of nature (=representation of God) VISION OF POETRY Poetry is where emotions are recollected in tranquillity. Poetry creates a link between past and present, where in the past there are emotions and memories, and in the present, there is what we feel in that moment. Poems are sometimes exaggerations: it depends on what the poet wants to say, he exaggerates when tells something positive.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD 4 stanzas Regular rhymes This poem was written two years after the poet took a walk in the natural setting of the Lake District and saw a long line of daffodils on a lake shore. Wordsworth’s most famous poem reports the poet’s experience with nature and the short- and long-term effect which this sight had on him. As in a romantic painting the poet vividly portrays the long line of yellow flowers moving like a dance in the wind, and the waves of the lake. The harmony is created through the large number of words to talk about joy referred to nature and to the poet as well as the regularity of the rhythm and the rhyme scheme. Finally, the last stanza describes the process of artistic creation, which according to Wordsworth, is necessarily determined by the recollection of emotion in a state of tranquillity.

WE ARE SEVEN The speaker meets an eight-year old girl and begins a friendly chat. He asks the little girl how many brothers and sisters she has, and she declares that "we are seven." The speaker asks where all of her siblings are and learns that two of them are actually dead. The speaker insists that the little girl has only four, and not six siblings, but the girl is resolute: her dead brother and sister still count. They argue a bit, and the speaker gets emphatic, exclaiming that "two are dead!" But the little girl has the last word and sticks to her guns. The poem ends with her declaration that "Nay, we are seven!"

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE The background to the poem is a real experience Wordsworth had in 1802 while crossing Westminster Bridge in London with his sister Dorothy. Sometime later, the memory of the experience inspired him to write this sonnet. In this sonnet we can find the juxtaposition between countryside and London, these landscapes, even though they are different, look the same when the sun rises.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) He lived in the age of revolutions and romanticism He was born in Davon He attended Cambridge University, but he didn’t graduate He moved to France, he became a republican, he supported the French Revolution During the period of terror, he moved to Pennsylvania, where he created a community called “Pantisocracy” a utopian society where everything was in common But after a while, the experiment failed, and he returned to England He met W. Wordsworth and lived with him and his sister Dorothy After his marriage failed, he became drug and alcohol addicted. He had to live at a surgeon’s who tried to keep his drug addiction under control. HIS MAIN WORKS -rhymical ballads with Wordsworth -the rime of the Ancient Mariner

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER The ballad talks about an old sailor who stops a man going to a wedding to tell him his strange story. While the Mariner was travelling south to the Antarctic, an albatross started flying around the ship, entertaining the crew who greeted it as a bird of good omen. But the Mariner inexplicably killed the albatross, triggering a chain of evil supernatural events. The wind died away, and the sheep got stuck in the middle of the ocean. The superstitious crew, who were growing increasingly thirsty, hung the dead bird around the Mariner’s neck to punish him for is cruelty. At last, a ship was sighted; it was a skeleton ship, carrying two spectre-figures: “Death” and her companion “Life-in-Death”. The two of them began to toss dice to determine the fate of the mariner’s ship. Life-in-Death won the mariner’s soul while Death took the shipmates’ lives. While one by one the sailors died, the mariner lived on, tortured by his guilt and bound to experience the condition of life in death. The punishment ended when the mariner unconsciously blessed some marine creatures which he had earlier found disgusting. The ship then began to move again. To complete his redemption, the mariner is condemned to wander to tell people his cautionary tale. INTERPRETATIONS This poem might be interpreted as a poem about isolation, as an allegory of man’s fall, punishment, and final redemption and as a metaphor for a journey from spiritual death to rebirth. COLERIDGE IS CONSIDERED A POST ROMANTIC BECAUSE OF THE USE OF THE SUPERNATURAL

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORDSWORTH’S AND COLERIDGE’S POETRY WORDSWORTH COLERIDGE CONTENT Things from ordinary life Supernatural characters To give these ordinary things the charm To give them a semblance of truth of novelty STYLE The language of common men purified Archaic language rich in sound devices by the poet The creative power of imagination. MAIN INTEREST Relationship between man and nature, Coleridge’s nature represented the awareness of the presence of the ideal in imagination as a means of knowledge the real. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge did not view nature as a moral guide or a source of consolation. Nature was not identified with the divine. AIM

MARY SHELLEY She was the daughter of Mary Woolstonecraft (a pioneer of feminism) and of William Godwin She was the second wife of the poet P.B. Shelley, which was a scandal. She was in Switzerland with her husband and friends, when, to pass the time, a ghost story competition was proposed, she wrote Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, claiming she had been inspired by a dream. FRANKENSTEIN Frankenstein is a novel about the mystery of creation in all its forms and a warning about the dangers of interfering with the process of nature. The work was published in 1818 and became a best-seller all at once. The novel has a complex structure and is told by different narrators. The book, which is an epistolary novel, develops through a series of letters -divided in three parts: +letters written by captain Walton to his sister; +letters by Victor to the Captain; +letters by the Monster to Victor. This multiplicity of points of view and the composite structure of the novel might be seen as a mirror to the origin of the creature’s body, which is itself made of different parts. The language is simple and unsophisticated. THE MYTH OF PROMETHEUS: the novel is subtitled as The Modern Prometheus, referring to the myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind and was punished for this act which made men equal in power to the gods. THE PLOT: Frankenstein, a Swiss scientist, after long studies, succeeds in creating a living human being who, as strong and powerful as he is ugly and revolting, eventually turns into a murderer and, in the end, destroys his own creator. The work is less simplistic than is generally believed, since, for the first time, a Gothic novel was concerned with moral and ethical problems, the main of which was the bad use man can make of science. As a “Modern Prometheus”, Frankenstein, in fact manipulates nature, but his “creature” soon gets out of his control. The science theme, which makes Mary Shelley a forerunner of modern science fiction, interweaves with others, such as social injustice or the Rousseauian conception of man as originally good. In fact, as long as he does not come into contact with society, the monster shows love and generosity towards everybody. But his love turns into hatred and violence when he finds himself rejected because of his hideousness, thus becoming an early prototype of the outsider, the outcast from society because of his “difference”.

The number of events and actions which take place in Frankenstein offer a wide display of themes Ranging from 1) the power of family relationships and 2) the effect of social and physical prejudices to 3) the consequences of scientific ambitions. The personal narratives of the creator and his monster give the reader different points of view on their own lives and on their wishes: this scientist desires to go beyond limits, and the monster wants to be accepted in a world which repeatedly refuses him. Frankenstein – or the modern Prometheus – is both a gothic and a non-gothic novel: It’s a gothic novel because of the presence of the monster, and the setting (rainy, foggy days in November) But it is also a non-gothic novel because of the use of science. In the last 2 decades, the text has been approached from a feminist perspective, and used to put into discussion male’s control over birth. The interest of science in the story is due to the number of elements ranging from genetic engineering to bioethics which Victor Frankenstein’s experiment displays. THE CREATION In Ingolstadt, Victor becomes progressively absorbed in his studies. Fascinated by the mystery of the creation of life, he begins to investigate the properties of the human body. Working hard in a lab that he had built in his apartment; he decides to begin the animation of a creature that he has assembled by using different parts of human corpses. In a gothic setting, which stirs the emotions of the readers, the creature comes to life in front of Frankenstein’s eyes. The creature is so deformed and hideous that the scientist cannot even look at it. The horrible, repulsive sight makes the scientist immediately realize what a horrible mistake he has made. When the monster gazes into the scientist’s eyes and awkwardly tries to reach out, it seems as though nature itself is about to seek revenge against him who has violated its laws.

THE VICTORIAN AGE

1837-1901

This period takes its name from queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901. This age was on of economic expansion, social reform and cultural change for Britain. The first country to become industrialised, Britain emerged as the centre of the European and world economy. By 1880, its colonies extended over more than a quarter of the earth and its culture reflected an unprecedented sense of energy. The process of expansion did not come without complications: This era was complex and contradictory: on the one hand, it was an age of progress, stability and great social reforms; on the other, it was also characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest. Rapid industrialisation encouraged people to move from the country to the city in search of jobs. Slums multiplied in city centres. Overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions meant that diseases could spread easily. The Poor Laws, a system of poor relief which had existed for centuries, was reformed with the creation of workhouses. Poverty was seen as an individual responsibility and a moral problem much like crime.

QUEEN VICTORIA Victoria became queen when she was only 18, she was helped by the Parliament  birth of the real Constitutional Monarchy. In her reign there was the development of Arts, Music, Science and Technology She was loved by the middle class (merchants, traders, factory owners) Development of trades  colonies (2/3 of the world) She became empress of India in 1876 She had to struggle with Ireland (division between Catholics -for the independence- and Protestants -against the independence).

THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE The Victorian age was a complex and contradictory era: on the one hand, it was an age of progress, stability and great social reforms; on the other, it was also characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest. The Victorian were great moralists: they faced a large number of problems on such a scale, that they felt obliged to support certain values which offered solutions or escapes. Thus, they promoted a code of values that reflected the world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on dutiful hard work, respectability and charity. These values were refined by the upper and middle classes, who had political and economic power. THE NOVEL In the Victorian age the novel was the dominant genre, with its neat structure of introduction, complication, and resolution, it was the form best suited to render the complexity of the age. The spread of literacy, the mechanisation of printing and the growth of circulating libraries made the book a mass product in an increasingly consumerist society.

CHARLES DICKENS (1817-1870) HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Victorian age Charles Dickens grew up in a large family; he was born in Portsmouth into a middle-class family (clerks) In 1822 his father was sent to prison, so they moved to London, where the family had to spend time in a workhouse. Charles was sent to work in a shoe-blacking warehouse. At the age of 15 he started working as a clerk in a solicitor’s office where he learnt Shorthand, which is a kind of writing made of symbols. He became a reporter for the Parliament and then, after four years, he became a journalist and used his experience to begin to write pieces concerning London life, titled Sketches by Boz ( his pen name). He got married and fathered ten children, when he divorced, he started travelling In his novels he directed his attention to the l...