Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Franza Mariateresa, libro consigliato And love finds a voice of some sort. Omosessualità e (auto)censura nella letteratura inglese e francese (1870-1930) , Stanco

PLOT

The plot is that of a romantic comedy.

The setting is a small country village, so something she knew very well.

In this country village MR and Mrs Bennet live with their five daughters:

Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Lydia and Kitty.

One day a rich bachelor, Charles Bingley and his two sisters rent a large estate

in the neighbourhood, called Netherfield Park.

After a series of balls and parties that bring the members of this little society

together, Mr Bringley falls in love with Jane, and his best friend, the aristocratic

Darcy, begins to feel attracted to Elizabeth. But she dislikes him because of his

snobbish behaviour.

When Mr Darcy declares his love, he shows contempt for her inferior social

position; so Elizabeth

rejects him and accuses him of separating her sister and Bingley.

Later, Elizabeth realises she was mistaken about Darcy, because she goes to

his rent and sees how he treats his worker, she realizes that he’s a good man

and accepts his proposal. They get married, and also Bingley becomes engaged

To Jane.

So the novel ends with the happy marriages of the two couples.

CHARACTERS

Main characters are Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. They both have positive

qualities, but also weaknesses , this was made to criticize the conventional

heroes and heroines of the period.

Darcy knows the principles of how to behave in his social world, but is self

centred and unsociable.

Elizabeth has a lively mind, one of the qualities that attracts Darcy to her.

She is intelligent and capable of complex ideas.

She has a strong spirit of independence and refuses to take on the rules

which her family or superior people try to impose on her.

Both Elizabeth and Darcy show an imperfect understanding of themselves

and each other.

She accuses him of pride and he accuses her of prejudice.

These accusations are partly well-founded. But they also work in reverse: she is

proud, and her pride blinds her to his virues, he is prejudiced by his upbringing

and is disgusted by he vulgar behaviour of Elizabeth’s mother and sisters.

Some of the minor characters in the novel are almost caricatures, like Lady

Catherin and Mrs Bennet, others are rather ‘flat’ like the sweet and attractive

Jane who is little more than a type, or objects of ridicule, like Mr Collins, the

pompous clergyman who, after Elizabeth’s refusal, proposes the next day to

her best friend ,Charlotte Lucas.

THEMES

The novel involves both hero and heroine in a journay towards self-

awareness and self-knowledge and this provides its central theme.

Other themes are love, marriage, status and wealth. Marriage is presented

from different points of views: in term of independence as the marriage

between Mr Collins and Elizabeth’s friend;

in term of infatuation and sexual attractions (Lidya and Wickam, Mr and Mrs

Bennet), so all these marriages are defined to be unhappy , except for the one

based upon love and understanding (as the love between Elizabeth and Darcy).

Before getting married they had to analize themselves ,before knowing each

other, and own after there moments of climax of the novel, they can marry , so

Jane Austin wanted to say that people have to be sure before getting married.

STYLE

This novel comes alive for the reader because of the vividness of the

characters and the brightness of dialogue often quoted directly, without the

mediation of the narrator.

These features have made the novel easily adaptable for stage and screen.

Jane Austen uses third person narration and presents the action from her

point of view. The first person also plays a part in the novel, because she also

uses the epistolary technique especially In the later chapters when the

characters have been fully outlined and the scope of the novel has expanded.

Irony is much employed as a technique in relation to the characters, who are

trapped in a double perspective: they do not know that things are not the way

they seem, while the readers does.

ROMANTICISM

CONTESTO STORICO [ CARATTERISTICHE DEL ROMANTICISMO ERANO

QUELLE XK ERANO UNA REAZIONE ALL’EMPIRISMO, REALISMO DELLA

STAGIONE LETTERARIA PRECEDENTE)

In the second half of the 18 century a new sensibility emerged and English

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Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry.

Romanticism coincided with the period of the Franch Revlution, and

Nepoleonic wars.

An economical change appeared at the end of the century : the industrial

revolution.

When the soldiers came back from wars they found a very difficult situation,

since a lot of machines had taken the places of men at works, and also women

were employed, differently from the previous period.

They also tried to contrast the Parliament and it rose a sort of fear called ‘ the

fear of Mob’ because the parliament feared that e great amount of people

together could bring a revolution. So the Parliament emanated a series of laws

called ‘combination act’ to be sure that the Mob couldn’t reunite in public

places to make revoluts.

Also the figure of George 3 was replaced by George 4 because he was

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mentally instable.

This period as called The period o f regency and George 3 was called the

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regent king.

The only thing that changed concerning people was that ‘the movement of the

evangelicals’ tried to help people since government couldn’t. They tried to

improve education through the Sunday school. They also tried to reform prisons

and to improve the condition of the working class people.

IMAGINATION

Romanticism had the need to express emotional experience and individual

feelings.

Imagination har a primary role in the Romanticism. Since the poet has the

power of imagination he’s described as a teacher, a moral guide, because he

wants to transmit the content he had learned and that other people couldn’t

understand by themselves. Thanks to the eye of imagination Romantic poets

could see beyond surface reality and discover a truth beyond the powers of

reason.

Imagination also allowed the poet to re-create and modify the external world

of experience.

The poet was seen as a visionary prophet or as a teacher whose task was to

mediate between men and nature to point out the evils of society, to give voice

to the ideals of freedom, beauty and truth.

THE FIGURE OF THE CHILD

There was serious interest about the experience of childhood. To the Augustan

Age, a child was important only in so far as he would become an adult and

civilised being.

Childhood was considered a temporary state. To a Romantic, a child was purer

than an adult because he was unspoilt by civilisation.

His uncorrupted sensitiveness meant he was even closer to God, therefore

childhood was a state to be admired and cultivated.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

There was new emphasis on the significance of the individual.

The Augustans had seen man as a social animal, in his relationship iwith his

fellows.

The Romantics, instead, saw him in a solitary state, and stressed the special

qualities of each individuals mind.

They exalted the atypical, the rebel. Therefore, natural behaviour, that is to say

impulsive and unrestrained, is good, whereas a behaviour governed by reason

and by the rules of society isnt’ good.

The ’noble savage’ concept by Rousseau is specifically a Romantic one.

(noble savage Frankenstein). The savage may appear primitive, but he has

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an instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world often superior to the

knowledge which has been acquired by civilised man.

THE cult of the exotic

Rousseau’s theories also influenced the cult of the exotic, that is, the

veneration of what is far away in space and in time. The grand tour of the poets

was towards Europe and we can say France, Italy, Greece but in this period also

other lands in the north were explored like Norway or Switzerland, and they

were considered exotic because it was unusual to explore them.

The cult of the exotic is linked to induvial, because the exotic was also

considered the poet as an outcast, but he refused the values of his society and

wanted to know other lands, other way of behaving, starting his individual

grand tour.

THE VIEW OF NATURE

Another important concept was the nature, especially for the poets of the 1 st

generation.

Nature was important because it was seen as a source of consolation for all the

problems concerning the society, it was seen as a moral guid, a spirit that can

teach to the poet what he had to transmit.

The Romantic poets also regarded nature as a living force and as the

expression of God in the universe.

POETIC TECHNIQUE

The Romantic poets searched for a new, individual style through the choice of a

language and subject suitable to poetry.

More vivid and familiar words began to replace the artificial words of the 18 th

century diction. S

TWO GENERATIONS OF POETS

The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations.

The poet of the first generation are : William Wordsworth and Samuel

Coleridge , some critics includes also Blake but he’s also considered a

PREROMANTIC. They were characterised by the attempt to theorise about

poetry. While planning Lyrical Ballads, they agreed that Wordsworth would

write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things with the aim of making them

interesting for the reader. Coleridge, instead, should write about visionary

topics, the supernatural, and mystery.

The poets of the second generation are George Byron, Percy Shelley and

John Keats. They experienced political disillusionment which Is reflected in

their poetry.

Most important topics were individualism, the alienation of the artist from

society, escapism.

They all exploited different concepts: Keats exploited he contest of the beauty

of Greek art; Shelley exploited the content of the renaissance of the human

conscience, and Byron exploited the theme of the outcast.

The poets of the 2 generation all died very young and away from home.

THE NOVEL OF MANNERS

As concern the novel of the period, we have to consider 2 different kind of

novel : The novel of manners and the historical novel.

The novel of manners dealt with how the member of the middle class

behavied in everyday routine and described their codes.

The greatest exponent was Jane Austen, because she exploited the concept of

the omniscient narrator, the flat and round characters, she used irony

describing flat characters, called ‘cover irony’ or ‘tongue in cheek’ cause

her irony makes smile but not laugh.

This kind of novel is set in the countrisides and it belong to the upper middle-

class. The theme is the marriage, so the social mobility is explored; also

friendship, balls, and every kind of location were people could combine

marriages. She used the 3 person narrator, and we can say that the passion

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and the feelings of the characters emerge through their dialogues.

The histor