Amabili vizi

Zancanaro Paola cl.5ALI A.S. 2010/2011

Amabili vizi

(Lovely Vices)

“Meglio avere tutti i vizi che non averne nessuno: meglio vivere che far finta.”

(M. Jouhandeau) 1

Zancanaro Paola cl.5ALI A.S. 2010/2011

Indice

I 7 Vizi Capitali............................................3

Accidia: James Joyce..................................5

Invidia: Le cause della Prima Guerra Mondiale.....................................17

Gola: Joanne Harris..................................20

Avarizia: Il marketing................................30

Ira: Il femminismo in Italia......................36

Lussuria: Gustave Flaubert......................47

Superbia: Oscar Wilde..............................56

Bibliografia.................................................66

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Zancanaro Paola cl.5ALI A.S. 2010/2011

I 7 vizi capitali

Accidia (o acedia)

(ing. sloth) Nel greco classico designava la negligenza, l'indifferenza, la mancanza di cure e d’interesse per una cosa. In generale, indica l'abbattimento, lo scoraggiamento, la prostrazione, la stanchezza, la noia e la depressione dell'uomo di fronte alla vita. È lo smarrimento estremo. Ne sono conseguenze tipiche l'instabilità e il disprezzo per gli impegni della propria vita. L'uomo, infatti, non padroneggia più la propria vita; le vicende lo avviluppano inestricabili ed egli non sa più vederci chiaro, non sa più come cavarsela e qualsiasi compito a lui affidato gli si erge davanti insormontabile.

Avarizia

(ing. avarice) Indica la scarsa disponibilità a spendere e a donare ciò che si possiede. Non deve essere confusa con l'avidità: mentre quest'ultima è il desiderio di accrescere il “possesso” (nel senso più generale possibile del termine), l'avarizia è concentrata sulla conservazione meticolosa di ciò che già si possiede. È considerata dannosa poiché l'avaro ignora il benessere degli altri a favore del proprio.

Gola (o ingordigia)

(ing. gluttony) Coincide con un desiderio d'appagamento immediato del corpo per mezzo di qualche cosa materiale che provoca compiacimento. In particolare, fa riferimento all'incapacità di moderarsi nell'assunzione di cibo, bevande e simili (fumare è considerato un vizio di gola). Specialmente in rapporto al cibo, è un problema serio che investe tutti gli aspetti della vita. Infatti, siccome il cibo è la prima condizione necessaria all'esistenza, è attraverso di esso che l'uomo affronta il difficilissimo tema dell'accettazione o del rifiuto di sé stesso.

Invidia

(ing. envy) È un sentimento nei confronti di un'altra persona (o gruppo di persone) che possiede qualcosa (concretamente o metaforicamente) che l'invidioso non ha. Essa si caratterizza come desiderio ambivalente: di possedere ciò che gli altri possiedono o che gli altri perdano quello che possiedono. Si tratta quindi di un confronto della propria situazione con quella della persona invidiata, ma non si riferisce al valore intrinseco della “cosa” posseduto da tale persona. È caratterizzata da una bassa autostima e può essere causata da una mancanza d’affetto in passato, da un'eccessiva competitività o da desideri che sono stati frustrati. Tra i più tipici comportamenti dell'invidioso c'è il disprezzo dell'oggetto invidiato e, in taluni casi, l'invidioso può assumere comportamenti molto aggressivi. Inoltre, nella maggior parte dei casi, l'invidia è rivolta verso lo stesso sesso. 3

Zancanaro Paola cl.5ALI A.S. 2010/2011

Ira

(ing. anger) Ciascuno di noi s’identifica solitamente con la parte educata e razionale di sé e rifiuta di riconoscere come propria la parte passionale, della cui attivazione è responsabile l’altro. È sempre qualcuno o qualcosa che ci ha fatto arrabbiare. In realtà, la rabbia è una passione che fa parte di noi e che dovrebbe indurci a guardarci dentro con più attenzione. Se cediamo all'ira, infatti, questo significa che in noi c’è qualche cosa d’irrisolto, c’è una disarmonia; in caso contrario non ci arrabbieremmo, ma affronteremmo la difficoltà con calma, moderazione e logica. In ogni caso la rabbia, come le altre passioni, è una dinamica del corpo e lo danneggia sia quand’è eccessivamente compressa sia quand’è scatenata senza limiti. Tutti i filosofi hanno sempre pensato che la salute del corpo e l’equilibrio della mente non si mantengono con la repressione delle passioni o con la loro rimozione, ma con la loro “misurata espressione”. Socrate raccomandava di “arrabbiarsi con la persona giusta, nella misura giusta, nel modo giusto, nel momento giusto e per la giusta causa”.

Lussuria

(ing. lust) La radice della parola coincide con quella di lusso (che indica un'esagerazione) e quella di lussazione (che significa deformazione o divisione). Designa quindi qualche cosa d’esagerato e di parziale. Il lussurioso, in altre parole, è portato a concentrarsi solo su alcuni aspetti del partner (il corpo o una parte di questo) che diventano il polo dell'attrazione erotica; tutto il resto è escluso, l'interezza è negata. Il corpo viene oggettivato e la persona spersonalizzata: le vesti, gli accessori, i gesti, la musica, le luci arrivano ad assumere un'importanza fondamentale poiché devono supplire alla mancanza di un altro tipo di seduzione che scaturisce da un'intesa psicologica e affettiva, oltre che fisica.

La lussuria è quindi una conseguenza di un certo tipo di paura: la paura del confronto con un altro essere umano. È anche una ricerca irrequieta che spesso ci porta a sentire il vuoto della vita; si cerca l'assoluto, ma si rimane inevitabilmente delusi. Può inoltre capitare che la sessualità tradizionale non basti più e così si cerca la novità, la trasgressione.

Superbia

(ing. pride) S'intende, in generale, la volontà di conquistare per se stessi, con ogni mezzo, una posizione di privilegio sempre maggiore rispetto agli altri. Essi devono riconoscere e dimostrare di accettare la loro inferiorità correlata alla superiorità indiscutibile e schiacciante del superbo. Il superbo è una persona innamorata della propria superiorità, vera o presunta, per la quale si aspetta un riconoscimento. La superbia affonda le sue radici nella ricerca e nell'affermazione dell’identità personale. L'identità non è qualche cosa che si elabora al proprio interno, ma è qualche cosa che ciascuno negozia nel rapporto con gli altri, da cui attende il riconoscimento. Il bisogno di riconoscimento nell'essere umano è fortissimo. A un certo punto della Storia, però, ha iniziato a diffondersi la convinzione che tutti gli uomini sono uguali. Se da un lato ciò è stato benefico al progresso poiché gli uomini hanno incominciato ad avere pari opportunità indipendentemente da razza, sesso, credo, estrazione sociale; d'altro canto, l'esasperazione di tale uguaglianza ha prodotto quell'omogeneizzazione dell'umanità che toglie ad ognuno di noi la possibilità di distinguersi dalla massa, favorendo di conseguenza l'espansione della superbia. 4

Zancanaro Paola cl.5ALI A.S. 2010/2011

Accidia (Sloth)

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

(J. K. Jerome)

Biography

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, just south of Dublin in a wealthy suburb called Rathgar. The Joyce family was initially well off as Dublin merchants with bloodlines that connected them to old Irish nobility in the country. James' father, John Joyce, was a fierce Irish Catholic patriot and his political and religious influences are most evident in Joyce's two key works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. As a result of their steadily diminishing wealth and income, the Joyce family was repeatedly forced to move to more modest residences and John Joyce's habitual unemployment as well as his drinking and spending habits, made it difficult for the Joyces to retain their previous social standing. A young James Joyce was sent away to the renowned Clongowes School in 1888, a Jesuit institution that was regarded as the best preparatory school in Ireland. The Clongowes school figures prominently in Joyce's work, specifically in the story of his recurring character Stephen Dedalus. Joyce earned high marks both at the Clongowes School and at Belvedere College in Dublin where he continued. At this point in his life, it seemed evident that Joyce was to enter the priesthood, a decision that would have pleased his parents. As James Joyce made contact with various members of the "Irish Literary Renaissance," his interest in the priesthood decreased. Indeed, Joyce became increasingly critical of Ireland and its conservative elements, especially the Church. In opposition to his mother's wishes, Joyce left Ireland in 1902 to pursue a medical education in Paris, and did not return to Ireland until the following year upon news of his mother's debilitation and imminent death. After burying his mother, Joyce continued in Ireland, working as a schoolteacher at a boys' school. After barely spending a year in Dublin, Joyce returned to the Continent, drifting in and out of medical school in Paris before taking up residence in Zurich. It was during this period that Joyce began writing professionally. In 1905, Joyce completed a collection of eight stories, entitled Dubliners, though it was not until 1913 that the volume was actually printed. During these frustrating and impoverished years, Joyce heavily relied upon the emotional support of Nora Barnacle, his unmarried Irish lover, as well as the financial support of his younger brother, Stanislaus Joyce. Both Nora and Stanislaus remained as protective, supporting figures for the duration of the writer's life. During the eight years between Dubliners' completion and publication, Joyce and Barnacle had two children, a son named Giorgio and a daughter named Lucia. Joyce's next major work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was "discovered" by Ezra Pound and the complete text was printed in New York in 1916, and in London in 1917. It was with the assistance of Pound, a prominent literary figure of the time, that Joyce came in contact with Harriet Shaw Weaver, who served as both editor and patron while Joyce wrote Ulysses. When Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922, many immediately hailed the work as genius. With his inventive narrative style and engagement with multiple philosophical themes, Joyce had established himself as a leading Modernist. 5

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Despite the fact that Joyce was writing in self-imposed exile, living in Paris, Zurich and Trieste while writing Ulysses, the novel is noted for the incredible amount of accuracy and detail regarding the physical and geographical features of Dublin. Thematically similar to Joyce's previous works, Ulysses examines the relationship between the modern man and his myth and history, focusing on contemporary questions of Irish political and cultural independence, the effects of organized religion on the soul, and the cultural and moral decay produced economic development and heightened urbanization. While Joyce was writing the epic work, there was serious doubt as to whether Ulysses would be completed. Midway through his writing, Joyce suffered the first of eleven eye operations to salvage his ever-worsening eyesight. At one point, a disappointed Joyce cast the bulk of his manuscript into the fire, though Nora Barnacle immediately rescued it. While Ulysses was hailed by some, the novel was banned from both the United Kingdom as well as the United States on obscenity charges. It was not until 1934, that Random House won a court battle that granted permission to print and distribute Joyce's Ulysses in the United States; two years later, the novel was legalized in Britain. By that time, Joyce was approaching the end of his public career having concluded his work on a final novel entitled Finnegan's Wake. Considered to be far more baffling and convoluted than Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake was a critical failure, ostracizing Joyce from many of his former admirers. At the outbreak of World War II, Joyce remained in Paris until he was forced to move first to Vichy and then to Switzerland. On January 13, 1941, James Joyce died of a stomach ulcer at the age of 58, and was buried in Zurich's Fluntern Cemetery. Though his prestige had faded towards the end of his life, Joyce regained literary stature in the decades following his death and Ulysses now stands as the definitive text of the Anglo-American modernist movement, marking Joyce's creative genius and premier abilities as a stylist of the English language.

Main works

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

This is a semi-autobiographical novel, first serialised in the magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format during 1916 in the United States. It's written in Joyce's characteristic free indirect speech style. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and religious-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He's a loser because he can't express his feelings and points of view and, to pursue his ambitions as an artist, he must leave his fatherland.

Summary

The novel takes place in Ireland at the turn of the century. Young Stephen Dedalus comes from an Irish Catholic family; he is the oldest of ten children, and his father is financially inept. Throughout the novel, the Dedalus family makes a series of moves into increasingly dilapidated homes as their fortunes dwindle. His mother is a devout Catholic. When Stephen is young, he and the other Dedalus children are tutored by the governess Dante, a fanatically Catholic woman. Their Uncle Charles also lives with the family. The book opens with stream of consciousness narrative filtered through a child's perspective; there is sensual imagery, and words approximating baby talk. We leap forward in time to see young Stephen beginning boarding school at Clongowes. He is very young, terribly homesick, non-athletic and socially awkward. He is an easy target for bullies, and one day he is pushed into a cesspool. He becomes ill from the filthy water, but he remembers what his father told him and doesn't tell on the boy. That Christmas, he eats at the adult table for the first time. 6

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A terrible argument erupts over politics, with John Casey and Stephen's father on one side and Dante on the other. Later that year, Stephen is unjustly hit by a prefect. He complains to the rector, winning the praises of his peers. Stephen is forced to withdraw from Clongowes because of his family's poverty. The family moves to Blackrock, where Stephen takes long walks with Uncle Charles and goes on imaginary adventures with boys from around the neighbourhood. When Stephen is a bit older, the family moves to Dublin, once again because of financial difficulties. He meets a girl named Emma Clere, who is to be the object of his adoration right up until the end of the book. His father, with a bit of charm, manages to get Stephen back into private school. He is to go to Belvedere College, another institution run by the Jesuits.

Stephen comes into his own at Belvedere, a reluctant leader and a success at acting and essay writing. Despite his position of leadership, he often feels quite isolated. He continues to be a sensitive and imaginative young man, acting in school plays and winning essay contests. He is also increasingly obsessed with sex; his fantasies grow more and more lurid. Finally, one night he goes with a prostitute. It is his first sexual experience. Going with prostitutes becomes a habit. Stephen enters a period of spiritual confession. He considers his behavior sinful, but he feels oddly indifferent towards it. He cannot seem to stop going to prostitutes, nor does he want to stop. But during the annual spiritual retreat at Belvedere, he hears three fire sermons on the torments of hell. Stephen is terrified, and he repents of his old behaviour. He becomes almost fanatically religious. After a time, this feeling passes. He becomes increasingly frustrated by Catholic doctrine. When a rector suggests that he consider becoming a priest, Stephen realizes that it is not the life for him. One day, while walking on the beach, he sees a beautiful girl. Her beauty hits him with the force of spiritual revelation, and he no longer feels ashamed of admiring the body. He will live life to the fullest. The next time we see Stephen, he is a student at university. University has provided valuable structure and new ideas to Stephen: in particular, he has had time to think about the works of Aquinas and Aristotle on the subject of beauty. Stephen has developed his own theory of aesthetics. He is increasingly preoccupied with beauty and art. Although he has no shortage of friends, he feels isolated. He has come to regard Ireland as a trap, and he realizes that he must escape the constraints of nation, family, and religion. He can only do that abroad. Stephen imagines his escape as something parallel to the flight of Dedalus, he escaped from his prison with wings crafted by his own genius. The book ends with Stephen leaving Ireland to pursue the life of a writer.

About

Was first published in serial form in the Egoist in the years 1914-15. Chronicling the life of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to young adulthood and his life-changing decision to leave Ireland, the novel is profoundly autobiographical. Like Stephen, Joyce had early experiences with prostitutes during his teenage years and struggled with questions of faith. Like Stephen, Joyce was the son of a religious mother and a financially inept father. Like Stephen, Joyce was the eldest of ten children and received his education at Jesuit schools.