Diritti umani e equità sociale tesina

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

Il riconoscimento dei è uno dei tasselli fondamentali di una evoluzione sociale e

diritti umani

storica che parte dall’antica Grecia, sino ad arrivare ai giorni nostri.

La sottoscritta dal re d’Inghilterra, Giovanni Senza Terra, nel 1215, è

Magna Charta Libertatum,

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 del 1776, una vera e

“Dichiarazione di indipendenza delle colonie americane”

propria dichiarazione di indipendenza dalla madrepatria britannica e, ancora, la “Dichiarazione dei

del 1789, emanata in Francia.

diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino”

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 con la

delle Nazioni Unite),

sottoscritta il 10 dicembre 1948, documento in

“Dichiarazione Universale dei Diritti dell’Uomo”

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:

First Reform Act

 The (1832) granted the vote to almost all male members of middle classes

Mines Act

 The (1862) prohibited the working of women and children in mines

Elementary Education Act

 The (1870) recognised the need for general primary schooling

Third Reform Act

 The (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 4

‘inner lives

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

by Boz”,

reporter when he was 16 with the nickname of “Boz” (“Sketches 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 Little Dorrit

The protagonists of his autobiographical novels, and

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

fictionalizes the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced when he

Oliver Twist 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.

There he falls into the hands

of a nasty gang of young

pickpockets, who try to make

a thief out of him, but the boy

is helped by an old

gentleman.

Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit burglary; during the job he is shot

and wounded. It is a Middle-Class family that adopts Oliver.

Investigations are made about who the boy is and it is discovered he has noble origins. Oliver’s

half-brother are arrested in the hand.

The most important setting of the novel is London, which is depicted at three different social levels.

 First, the parochial world of the workhouse

 Second, the criminal word is described with pickpockets and murderers

 Finally, the world of the Victorian Middle-Class with moral values and human dignity

Dickens attacked the social evils of his times such as poor house, unjust courts, and the underworld.

With the rise of poverty, workhouses run by parishes sprang up all over England to give relief to the

poor.

However, the conditions prevailing in the workhouses were appalling. Their residents were subject

to host of hard regulations: labour was required, families were almost always separated, and rations

of food and clothing were meager. The idea upon which the workhouses were founded was that

poverty was the consequences of laziness.

Workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic improvement and caused further

misery. 6

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

EXPRESSIONISMUS

Philosophischer Hintergrund der expressionistischen Bewegung war der Einfluss des

naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens, während Historischer Hintergrund waren der erste Weltkrieg und

seine Folgen, die Ausrufung der Republik Osterreich, die Weimarer Republik und der

Putschversuch der NSDAP.

Die expressionistischen Ideale richteten sich gegen Autorität, Industrialisierung, Enthumanisierung,

Selbstzufriedenheit und Imperialismus.

Diese Künstlerische Erneuerungsbewegung nahm keine Rücksicht auf Ethik und Moral.

Alle Brücken zur Vergangenheit sollten abgebrochen werden.

Der Ruf nach Erneuerung, Wiedergeburt und Revolution gegen die wilhelminische Gesellschaft

wurde laut.

Vertreter des Expressionismus sind Georg Heym und Georg Trakl und besonders Franz Kafka. 7

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

FRANZ KAFKA

Franz Kafka wurde in Prag als Sohn eines

autoritären Kaufmanns, Hermann Kafka

In diesen Jahren begann seine Freundschaft

mit Max Brod, der nach Kafkas Tod alle

seine Werke Herausgab.

Während seines Studiums näherte sich Kafka

sozialistischen Idealen sowie der Philosophie

von Nietzsche und Kierkegaard.

Die lebenslange Krankheit in den häufigen

Sanatoriumsaufenthalten und die jüdische

Herkunft verstärkten seine schmerzhafte

Einsamkeit bis zu seinem Tod.

Da die Nationalsozialisten die Verbreitung

seiner Werke verhinderten, wurden sie erst

nach dem Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges

wiederentdeckt.

Seine Hauptwerke sind: „Das Urteil“, „Die

Verwandlung“, „Brief an den Vater“, „Ein

Landarzt“, „Ein Hungerkünstler“, „Beim Bau

der chinesischen Mauer“.

Seine fragmentarischen Romane „Der Prozess“, „Der Schloss“ und „Amerika“ bilden eine große

Trilogie.

Die Sachlichkeit seines Stils lässt eine phantastische, dämonische, unwirkliche, eben „surreale“

Welt entstehen.

DER PROZESS

Das Gesetzt ist das Leitmotiv Kafkas Werke. Er handelt von einem Prozess, der sich vor einem

unbekannten Gericht abspielt. Im Verlauft des ganzen Romans werden die Versuche von Josef K.

dargestellt, den Grund seiner Verhaftung zu entdecken und seine Unschuld zu beweisen.

Ein Mann vom Lande kommt und bittet um Eintritt in das Gesetz.

Mit der Bezeichnung „Mann vom Lande“ ist zweifellos ein Mensch gemeint, der in guter Absicht

kommt und nicht erwartet, auf große Schwierigkeiten zu stoßen.

Der Mann vom Lande macht sich dadurch schuldig, dass er Gesetz fast obsessiv sucht, statt ins

Gesetz einzutreten.

Hier findet man typisch kafkaeske Situation: Es herrscht weder ein absolutes Verbot, noch ein

absolutes Gefangensein, da es immer ein Ausgang gibt.