1600-1700

First: prayers; hymns; diaries

Soon after the Independence: adventures;

puritan tales

Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard Almanac

Irving Washington: The Mystery of Sleepy

Hollow

Fennymore Cooper: The Last of Mohicans

Mary Shelley Science fiction: Power of science: manipulation of nature 1818: Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

Creation of man; the different; the

double.

DRAMA

Oliviero Goldsmith (1728 1774 ) and

Brinsley Sheridan (1715-1816)

POETRY

William Blake :Contemporary world and

spiritual world, art as a creative vision,

freedom and love for justice 6 Poet and

prophet ; sources: Divina Commedia by

Dante; Works: Song of Innocence and

Songs of Experience.

1760: Enlightment in Europe: Voltaire,

Diderot, Hume

1770s: Thomas Gainsborough: landscape

paintings

1781: Kant writes the Critique of Pure

Reason

1790: orchestral music: Hayden, Mozart,

Beethoven

New sources: Nordic and Celtic cultures; Middle

Ages, ancient national folk poetry (T. Percy); The

Works of Ossian (J. Macpherson)

New features: originality and creativity;

spontaneity; emphasis on individual genius;

unknown and supernatural; free imagination;

sensations; nature; exotic times and places.

GOTHIC NOVEL

in America

in Europe

Poetry: First

generation

Poetry: Second

generation

Novel

Reactions against the

Enlightenment

Re-evaluation of the individual

Influence of revolutionary ideals

The Lyrical Ballads (1798),

Romantic manifesto

imagination and emotion

subjective and particular

individuality

freedom

medieval and modern

subjects

ordinary language

different poetic forms.

exoticism; orientalism

Samuel Taylor

Coleridge

William

Wordswoth

From nature to

supernatural; emotion

recollected in tranquility

from supernatural to

nature

Imagination:

Past

England vs Scotland

Journey : growing

History : masses are protagonists.

Works (about 90 novels) : Ivanhoe

(crusades); Rob Roy (Scottish clans),

Waverly (Scotland) Richard I or The

Talisman (Crusades in the Holy Land)

Domesticc novels

Witty and ironic dialogues

Well defined characters ; Country gentry

Works: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and

Sensibility, Northanger Abbey (parody of

Gothic novels) , Persuasion, Emma,

Mansfield Park (about slavery in America)

Jane Austen Sir Walter

Scott

America

E.A. POE:

Father of detective

story; double; fear in

man himself

Autobiographical

elements (tragic life)

Works: Tale of Mystery

and Ratiocination

Politically committed

Struggle on the

continent

Classical, medieval,

oriental inspiration

Variety of forms

POETS: Lord Gordon

Byron; Percy Bisshe

Shelley; John Keats

-Historical background

-Urbanization and

communication

-New printing machinary

Literary background

Three stages

Early Victorians

Writers identify themselves

with their own age

Increased the numeber of the readers

Episodic structer of the plot; serial

instalments after 1820

Very long works

Mass literat. Realistic books & domestic

books (psychological

introspection; experiences)

Mid Victorians

1919-1901: J. Ruskin :

Gothic architecture moral

qualities, beauty of hand

made products against

machines.

Charles Darwin: The Origin

of the Species and The

Evolution of man

Late Victorians

Dissatisfaction and rebellion

Anti victorian reaction due to

new scientiphic and

philosophical theories

Work

Emily Brnte

Charlotte Brnte

Charles Dickens Social novel

Jane Eyre -gothic, mistery

- psychological introspection,

education.

- women condition

Work

Work

Wuthering heights -plot without chronology,

modern shifts of time

Romantic (love) and gothic

aspects (ghosts, life in death)

+ natural approach to love and

feelings and modern structure

(various narrators)

Indirect narrative tecnique

Nelly (world that disappears)

and Lockwood (age of

changes): 2 narratives, 2

cultures

-sense of humour

-episodies (pathos)

-world seen though childrens

eyes

- caricatures/figures

- Painter of English life

- characters (human qualities)

-denounce of social evils

- fluent style and use of

symbolism. powerful imagin.

- evil of utilitarianisms

(towns)

Hard Times

Oliver Twist

POETRY:

revival of Romanticism

but with a sense of

uneasiness Brotherhood: New taste for Beauty in a world dominated by materialism and compromise. Return to semplicity and spirituality Paintings before Raphael

Poetry: religion, middle ages, nature, details, idealisation of beauty; symbols, against machines that kill

Pre-Raphaelite Robert Browning

Tennyson

act of divine love (search for God)

themes: greatness of his period , soul study

dramatic monologue Shakespeare; revelation of

unconscious crisis of man seen ironically.

Poet as a missionary in a world without art

Work

DRAMA Crisis:

-audience demanded amusement -Star system

-Show business -Great expensive three dimensional

sceneries -Distorted spirit of classics Rebirthnew influences

France(Scribe) Denmark (Ibsen):

Sweden (Strindberg) Russia (Checkhov):psychological

introspection; women independence;

social problems;retrospective method

naturalism and realism

Realism: clash between man and environment, illusion and reality (E. Zola)naturalism (Darwin). Man no

longer responsible for his action determined by forces beyond his

control Writers task: to record events,

impersonal like a scientist, without

Aestheticism: European movement

1835: Theophile Gautier: frustartion and uncertainty; break of conventions, free

imagination.

Art: Impressionism

France: - decadentism, 1890:

- symbolism, escape not in nature but in the self, Baudelaire

G. Eliot T. Hardy

Stevenson R. Kipling

O. Wilde

G. B. Shaw

Works

Works Works Works Works Works

Revitalization of

the drama

influence of

economists and

philosophers

comedy of

ideas,

various viewpoints

-Cult of art and

beauty

Social life

Novel:

- Picture of

Dorian Gray:

Double, gothic

Drama:

- The Importance

of Being Earnest

absurd situations

satire

double personality

of man; Darwin;

double personality

Primitive nature;

far off lands.

Dr. Jeckyll and

Mr Hyde

Tresure Island

The Black Arrow .

Escape;

colonialism

Kim

The jungle Book

Return to a period

before

industrialization

The return of the

Native

Tess

male pen name, to

be taken seriously.

The Mill on the

Floss

Authors

Ugo Foscolo

Romantic poets

G. Leopardi A. Manzoni

I Promessi Sposi

patriotic, historical

and didactic novel

- Pessimistic view

- Natura matrigna

I Canti

Poet and novelist Patriotism I Sepolcri

Le ultime lettere

di Jacopo Ortis

Scapigliatura Verismo

Renewal in Italian culture (1860-1880) - realistic (verismo) - foreign influences (Germany).

Verismo (Italian vero, "truth") :Italian literary movement (1875 - 1895). Verga and Capuana: main exponents, writers of a verismo manifesto

- pessimistic - impersonality

Work

Work

Verga : I Malavoglia

-Mastro Don Gesualdo

Emilio Praga :Preludio :

Arrigo Boito :Lezione danatomia :

Poetry

Prose

Modernism Exoticism

War poets - Horror and disillusion

Owen; Sasson; Brooke; Sisley

The Georgians Rural life and romanticism

Brooke ;De La Mare

Transition 1885/20s Bridge, Houseman

W. B. Yeats

Vorticism

Imagism

Modernism

-Faith in man -Supporter of colonialism, (White Mans Burden),at first, then seen it as a Nightmare -Education -Different mentality.

journey into the self (epiphanies) Sinister background=inner world of man European civilization confronts itself with alien environment: it

R. Kipling

Conrad

different points of view;narrator with common values; manipulation of time sequence Double character Style: rethorical; long sentences(obscurity) use

Heart of Darkness

Sea

-story in the story -metaphors -montage -monologue :instrument to transform the phenomena into words

Experiences on new forms focus on mental

stream of

consciousness

Techniques

Characteristics

time

Autors

W. James

H. Bergson

G. Orwell

J. Joyce

V. Wolf

Distopian novels, Politically connected, language to communicate ideas. Essays Novels: Animal Farm (allegory; political fairy tale) Danger of propaganda manipulation

Oversimplification Control of language

-direct interior monologue -total objectivity (artists disappears). -Irish paralysis; exile -realism + symbolism Dubliners: naturalistic linear tecnique (15 stories, Dublin life in various period of life; use of epiphanies = sudden revelation of inner thoughts Portrait of an Artist Ulysses: sperimentation;

alter ego, interior monologue; Odyssey

Entire area of mental attraction Consciousness flows like a river; area beyond communication Portrait of a Lady

-indirect interior monologue -fictional and chronological time Works: Mr Dalloway (time; suicide; IW.W. as nervous breakdown) Orlando (time and sexes) The Waves (Flowing of life) To the Lighthouse (inner and chronological shifts of time; desire and aims)

Inner time eludes the clock time

-T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats -Politically motivated, - interested in mind and symbols

alienation incommunicability tradition and past objective correlative Myth Metaphysical poets Dante (journey) Before the conversion: The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land Conversion: The Journey of the Magi; Four

Quartets: faith religious solution (faith, religious solution)

T.S. Eliot

1920-1930

Prufrock The Waste Land Aridity, sterility Fragmentation, incommunicability, quotations; images, various levels; past; spiritual decay emptiness (Hollow Men)

Decadentism,

Intellectual

emotion

(vorticism)

E.Pound

-New experiences, Celtic and Oriental languages. -He cut the Waste Land Blast Vortex: beauty of the machine -with and then in contrast with Amy

Hulme: hard, dry images

exact words from common speech

new rhythm freedom in subject

matters

precise images concentration no descriptions 1914. Des

Imagistes Amy Lowell: inner

introspection

-Irish revival:

Yeats, OCasey

-T. S. Eliot:Greek

Drama

-Commercial

theatre

-Non realism

(Brecht )

- Expressionism

Between the two wars

Theatre of

Cruelty

Theatre of

Anger

Theatre of

Absurd

American writers in Europe (roots)

F.Scott Fitzgeral: the Roaring Twenties disillusion of the American Dream

E. Hemingwaypersonal experiences in Spanish Civil War ; Nobel Prize

A.Huxley

The Devils about Inquisition.

NOVEL: Brave

New World (anti-utopian )

Violence on

the stage violence

of war, of man

John Osborne

Involved in the period:

welfare

cold war

Suez Canal

generation gap

lower and upper middle classes

Language: slang and colloquial language; verbal violence (cruelty)

Angry Young Men Work: Look Back in Anger (1956)

dissatisfaction disillusion verbal

life is meaningless characters : stylized; complementary;

Works: Waiting for Godot (1953) Language: essential; short sentences; nonsense; violent

Psychological violence (cruelty, anger) Structure: circular

Themes: sterility, deterioration, incommunicability; mental dependence; monotony; actions without; progression;

entertainment; inability to act; fixed time

Samuel Becket

Sources: Kafka; Becket Menaces:

Physical violence (cruelty);

loss of security;

room/outside world (protection; womb; refuge; property; prison);

memories ; racial intolerance; cosmic disaster

intruder (false identity; blindness; impossibility to recollect the past; solitude; reality vs unreality.

Language: contradictions uneasiness; incommunicability; repetitions; pauses and silences; common speech Works: one act plays (for radio); The Dumb Waiter; The Caretaker; The Room

Harold Pinter