Diritti umani e equità sociale tesina

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

Evoluzione dei diritti umani…

…verso l’equità sociale 1

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

Indice

• 1. Introduzione e breve excursus storico pag. 3
• 2. Inglese
• 2.1 The Age of Reforms and Victorian Novel pag. 4
• Oliver Twist
• 2.2 Charles Dickens – pag. 5
• 3. Tedesco
• 3.1 Expressionismus pag. 7
• Der Prozess
• 3.2 Franz Kafka – pag. 8
• 4. Francese
• 4.1 Existentialisme pag. 9
• Le Sexe
• 4.2 Simone De Beauvoir - Deuxième pag. 10
• 5. Italiano Se questo è un uomo
• 5.1 Primo Levi – pag. 12
• 6. Storia dell’arte Il Quarto Stato
• 6.1 Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo – pag. 15 2

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

Introduzione e breve excursus storico

Il riconoscimento dei diritti umani è uno dei tasselli fondamentali di una evoluzione sociale e storica che parte dall’antica Grecia, sino ad arrivare ai giorni nostri.

La Magna Charta Libertatum, sottoscritta dal re d’Inghilterra, Giovanni Senza Terra, nel 1215, è convenzionalmente indicata come il primo documento che sanciva alcuni diritti anche per i ceti non nobiliari.

Questa “carta” mirava, soprattutto, a tutelare i cosiddetti uomini liberi che, al contrario dei servi, non avevano alcun vincolo con la terra e potevano quindi svincolarsi dal legame di fedeltà con il proprio feudatario; erano, inoltre, previsti il divieto per il Sovrano di imporre nuove tasse senza il previo consenso del Parlamento, la garanzia per tutti gli uomini di non poter essere imprigionati senza prima aver ottenuto un regolare processo ed alcuni diritti in ambito economico.

Nel corso del 1700 si svilupparono poi, in America e in Francia, dei movimenti politici e di pensiero che sfociarono nell’approvazione di due importanti documenti nella storia dell’evoluzione dei diritti umani: la “Dichiarazione di indipendenza delle colonie americane” del 1776, una vera e propria dichiarazione di indipendenza dalla madrepatria britannica e, ancora, la “Dichiarazione dei diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino” del 1789, emanata in Francia.

Si tratta di atti che costituiscono vere e proprie pietre miliari, punti di riferimento e di svolta di un processo che, a partire del 1900, ha realizzato una sorta di “globalizzazione politica”, un fenomeno di indipendenza anche culturale.

Un contributo notevole è stato dato dall’ONU (Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite), “Dichiarazione Universale dei Diritti dell’Uomo”, sottoscritta il 10 dicembre 1948, documento in cui vengono sanciti i concetti basilari di libertà ed eguaglianza, i diritti economici, sociali e culturali dell’individuo.

Nel corso del XIX secolo molti ordinamenti europei enunciarono gradualmente ulteriori principi e libertà fondamentali, quali il riconoscimento del diritto di voto e di sciopero, la tutela del diritto di riunione e di associazione impegnandosi nel raggiungimento di una effettiva uguaglianza giuridica, economica e sociale di tutti gli uomini. 3

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

The Age of Reforms

Queen Victoria’s reign was the longest in the history of England: she came to the throne in 1837 and died in 1901.

It was a period of unprecedented material progress, imperial expansion and also one of political developments and social reforms.

During her reign the two main political parties were the Liberals and the Conservative who alternated in Government.

By the middle of the century Britain had become a nation of town dwellers. The death rate was high and the terrible working conditions in polluted atmospheres had a disastrous effect especially on children’s health.

The Government promoted an effective campaign to clean up the towns, then devastated by cholera epidemics and TB.

Other services were also introduced such as water, gas and lighting, paved roads, places of entertainment, for example public houses, music halls, parks, stadiums and shops. Even new Victorian institutions prisons, police stations, boarding schools.

Law and order were among the major problems of the urban environment and modern police forces were needed to keep cities under control.

The most important acts of this period are:

• The First Reform Act (1832) granted the vote to almost all male members of middle classes.
• The Mines Act (1862) prohibited the working of women and children in mines.
• The Elementary Education Act (1870) recognised the need for general primary schooling.
• The Third Reform Act (1884) granted the right to vote to all male members of the working classes.

The Victorian Novel

During the Victorian Age, novels became the most important form of literature and the main form of entertainment since they were read aloud within the family.

The novelist felt they had a moral and social responsibility to fulfil: they aimed at reflecting the social changes, the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns.

The characters of Victorian Novel are: urban setting, omniscient narrator, didactic aim, long and complicated plots and deep analysis of characters’ inner lives.

Urban Setting

The Long, Omniscient Victorian complicated narrator, plots aim novel didactic Deep analysis of characters’ inner lives 4

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

Charles Dickens

English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period, Dickens’s works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812, during the new industrial age.

He had an unhappy childhood because his father, his mother and his brothers were imprisoned in the Marshalsea Prison and Charles has worked at the factory.

Dickens was sent to a school in London and at fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at an attorney’s, and studied shorthand at night.

When he realized that he had a talent for writing, he taught himself short and became a newspaper reporter when he was 16 with the nickname of “Boz” (“Sketches by Boz”, where he wrote about English people and their defects).

Dickens married Catherine Hogarth on April 2, 1836 and during the same year he became editor of Bentley’s Miscellany.

Charles Dickens started a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate, although he continued, as well, his journalistic and editorial activities.

Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, the protagonists of his autobiographical novels, became the symbol of an exploited childhood confronted with the grim and bitter realities of slums and factories.

Other work includes Bleak House, Hard times and Great Expectations, dealing with social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and the working class in general.

He spent his last years giving readings of his own work in England, Scotland and Ireland, until he died in London in 1870.

In his novels, Dickens attacks one or more social evils: debtor’s prisons, workhouses, repressive education, capital punishment and conformism masked by religion and justice.

In all these novels, the greatest victims are the children either individually or in groups, often ill-treated, exploited in the hardest jobs (mining, textile industry), starved or beaten to death.

Another important topic is his criticism of the top role of money in the Victorian materialistic society.

Children are often the most important characters in Dickens’s novels, the novelist’s ability lay both in making his readers love his children, and putting them forward as models of the way people ought to behave towards one another.

This didactic stance was very effective, since the result was that the more educated, the wealthier classes throughout England acquired a knowledge of their poorer neighbours of which many were previously almost ignorant. 5

Antonio Lovaglio – V A Linguistico A.S. 2012/2013

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist fictionalizes the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced when he was a boy.

Oliver is a poor boy of unknown parents, he is brought up in a workhouse.

He is later sold to an undertaker as an apprentice, but the cruelty and unhappiness he experiences with his new master force him to run away to London.