Riassunto esame Letteratura Inglese 2, prof. Partenza

Romantic literature

William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge: poets of the Lake District

Lord Byron: “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”

Walter Scott took inspiration from Scottish ballads, folks, and history: “Waverly, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe”

Jane Austen è preromantica e romantica perché è in grado di descrivere la società e incidere su di essa

Mary Bronte, Shelley Sisters

Romantic poetry express

• Personal feelings and emotions
• Imagination is a main source of poetry
• Nature is a living thing, a teaching and healing power. Ma è anche rifugio e espressione dell’immanenza di Dio

Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shelley, e Coleridge furono i maggiori esponenti

Victorian literature

Realtà personale + sociale = romanzo

Charles Dickens

• “The Pickwick papers, Copperfield, Oliver Twist”
• Representative of critical realism
• Use of humour and his own childhood experience
• Books set in London in which he describes poor people’s life

William Makepeace Thackeray

• “Vanity Fair” = la Fiera Della vanità
• He gives us a picture of the 19th-century society
• Rappresenta la realtà come un palcoscenico (come Shakespeare), è un tipico tema Vittoriano: “things are not what they are”. Periodo di ambiguità, al contrario del Settecento
• “Vanity fair” è la storia di una ragazza che sposa un uomo anziano per soldi, ma che alla fine perderà tutto perché ha ottenuto quella posizione grazie a dei sotterfugi

Robert Louis Stevenson

“Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Oscar Wilde

• “The picture of Dorian Gray, The happy Prince, The importance of Being Earnest”
• Best dramatist of the time
• Decadent and symbolist

Rudyard Kipling

• “The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book”
• Won the Nobel prize in 1907
• Miscuglio tra letteratura per ragazzi e denuncia sociale

Regina Vittoria sale al trono nel 1837

Alfred Tennyson

• Esprime la destabilizzazione del periodo vittoriano attraverso lo scontro tra religione (infondatezza) e scienza (certezza)
• Il progresso è mosso dal dubbio
• L’attacco alla religione non è fatto apertamente perché dominava ancora sulla società

Modernism (20th century)

• Eterogeneità
• Experimentalism
• Provocazione: reazione intellettuale\morale
• Non c’è continuità con la realtà, che è filtrata attraverso l’immaginazione
• Loss of faith, suffering and uncertainty a causa della guerra
• Revolution against literary tradition: linguaggio (James Joyce), contenuti (William Golding)
• Attraverso il linguaggio si mostra il senso di disordine e fragilità, il linguaggio esprime l’interiorità dell’autore

George Bernard Shaw

“Pygmalion”

John Galsworthy

“Forsyte Saga” upper-class family

George Orwell

“Animal Farm” satire of politics of the Soviet Union

William Golding

“Lord of the flies”: fights against negativity in people (le mosche sono metafora di bambini)

Experimental novels

• Virginia Woolf - “To the lighthouse”
• James Joyce - “Dubliners”, “Ulysses”

Detective stories

Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle

Sci-fi novels

• “The war of the worlds”, “The Time Machine” Herbert George Wells

Angry young men

Hated social system

John Osborne

“Look back in anger”: descrive il mondo come ruvido e arrabbiato; “kitchen sink drama”: concetto dei piccoli spazi

Kingsley Amis

“Lucky Jim”, romanzo in cui si descrive uno spirito ribelle all’universo

Absurd drama

No action, no plot

Samuel Beckett

“Waiting for Godot”: opera piena di nichilismo; passività in attesa della morte

Dynamics of desacralization – Modulo 2

Introduction

The idea of desacralization has become commonplace, attributing to the word the rejection of what is sacred. One can suppose it is connected to theology or to the relation between humans and anything that can express a denial of the spiritual part of life. To desacralize implies challenging the sacred or traditional features of an institution or tradition. It brings back to reality what had a religious significance or what was not supposed to be cast in doubt. The verb expresses the attitude of generalized irreverence and disrespect towards people and ideas, though it is not always based on denial of its intrinsic sacral character. Desacralization recalls the idea of antisacred, something that authors have continuously tried to focus on in their works, with the purpose of changing a precise order, and the intention of creating something new.

The idea of desacralization is the starting point to reconsider human role and life that becomes expressive of political, social, or religious structures. Disenchantment expressed by the authors is the impulse to reposition human beings’ viewpoint in a perspective that might be new. The severe criticism of the authors reverses all forms of reification or subordination, creating a literary universe in which a sort of antiphrasis becomes the real way to understand and decipher the world which is full of pain, uncertainty, deception, and loss of faith.

Guyonne Leduc - “The stylistic desacralization of man” in Britain in the (Sophia) Pamphlets

In Britain, the long eighteenth century (1688-1815) was the golden age of patriarchy, the male dominance over women and children and the subordination of women in society inherited from Hebrew and Christian societies, that rested upon two pillars: the subordination required of women as a punishment for Eve’s sin, and an understanding of men’s and women’s bodies in terms of strength and weakness. Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft didn’t deny these two aspects; they wanted to give women a better and more equal role in society. The period was characterized by the victory of individualism, which was a victory for property, and wives, by their very legal definition, were propertyless, which meant the reinforcement of the authority of husband and father. Man was thought of as a kind of sanctuary (“sacer”), an entity not to be questioned.

At the time of the revival of the “querelle des femmes” in mid-century Britain, in response to Lord Chesterfield’s article in Common Sense, the anonymous “Sophia” published a pamphlet entitled “Woman not inferior to Men” (22/11/1739), which became an epitome of pre-feminist ideas of the time, where she dismisses the idea of female inferiority and male superiority. An anonymous answer was written on 20/12/1739 by a male adversary in “Man superior to Woman”, which led “Sophia” to write a response in 1740 called “Woman’s Superior Excellence over man”. Her two pamphlets were reprinted separately in 1743 by Jacob Robinson, another publisher. In 1751 the controversy was still active when the same author published the 3 pamphlets together under the common title of “Beauty’s triumph; or, the Superiority of the Fair Sex Invincibly Proved”. This edition respected the material division into 3 treatises but used continuous page numbers.

Sophia’s two pamphlets are defined as Treatise(s). The first one is also referred to as “my first essay”, “my former essay”, and the second as “my enquiry”. Her adversary’s answer refers to her first pamphlet as “that ingenious Essay” and defines itself “this little treatise”. In the 1751 edition, the length of the 3 pamphlets increases from 63 to 100 to finally 138. The addresser, Sophia, doesn’t conceal her sex or social rank (“a Person of Quality”) or her age (“a young lady”). The addressees are men and women who are directly addressed by Sophia since she knows that her treatises will be useless if they’re not read by men. Her answer to her adversary is aimed at male readers as she wants to prove his partiality and error to them. Sophia and her adversary were very widely influenced by the English translation of the Cartesian Poulain de la Barre’s “Égalité des deux sexes” (“The Woman as Good as the Man” by A. Lovell) who applied for the first time Descartes’ demonstration about separation between mind and body.

Sophia takes up nearly the whole of Poulain’s “The Woman as Good as the Man” in order to write her two pamphlets, but the result is different from the source text/hypotext as she borrows from Poulain some innovative ideas but not all of them, in particular the inequality between ranks, between human beings, and not only between men and women.

Sophia’s identity is unknown

• Probably a penname used by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu because she reacted to Lord Chesterfield’s article in “Common Sense” and described women as rational beings in her own periodical “The nonsense of common sense”. There are some evidences, but Robert Halsband, her biographer, says it is impossible to prove the hypothesis. (C. A. Moore, C. Garnier)
• Probably is Lady “Sophia” Fermor, the daughter of Thomas, the Earl of Pomfret, and the second wife of Lord Carteret (M. Reynolds)
• Doris Mary Stenton suggests that Sophia was a man because it’s unlikely that a woman who felt deeply about the exclusion of women would have written like Sophia.
• Another possibility is that the three writers were one and the same person since at the time it was a rhetorical game to write on both sides of a question: it is easy to explain the weak logic of her opponent

Sophia’s treatment of men is dictated by two elements: her attacks are either to be found in Poulain’s treatise or they are to be read without the influence of Poulain. When Poulain criticizes men, Sophia enhances his attacks using two devices in her pamphlets, that either lexically or syntactically reinforce the content. Substitution (she adopts Poulain’s structures introducing changes within them) and addition (insert pejorative terms) are used separately or simultaneously.

• P: Poulain – interested, spend whole years -> Sophia – corrupted, waste whole years + have presumed boldly
• P: Poulain – these odd opinion, outrageousness, subject, not shared with us -> these many absurd notions, outrages, enslaved, excluded from a share (when Sophia wants to know why men think that women are excluded from public offices)

Sophia inserts a relative cause which shows jealousy when talking about obstacles to women’s education. Substitution and addition mutually reinforce one another in her first essay when she writes that men are responsible for spreading the misleading idea that knowledge is useless for women. She takes the initiative to criticize men: the nature of her arguments and the violence of her vocabulary are different from those used in the passages where she gets inspiration from Poulain. Her frontal attacks can take several forms:

• Repetition, use of short incisive expressions
• Resorting to affects in order to move the reader

These devices differ from argumentation, that is used to convince the reader. Sophia’s attacks can first be found in derogatory expressions containing the noun “sex” (ex. “that jealous, ungenerous sex”). Men are reified using the terms “creatures”, “things”, “objects” which are more numerous in the first pamphlet. Sophia sarcastically mocks men using the ironic adjectives “lordly”, “modestly”, and “unnatural”, “pretty”, “superficial” which vituperate their self-designation. In the second pamphlet, she uses the term “such generous creature”: an antiphrasis. She shows contempt and condescension, not compassion, when using the expression “poor thing”. Sophia’s lexical variety is enriched by four terms which hint at men:

• Wretch (despicable person)
• Brutes
• Savages
• Brat: infantilizes men, whom women try to please to improve their living conditions or to obtain benefits

She criticizes scientists (infantilization – men having the same job) (because scientist men are like children who rely on appearances to defend a geocentric system) and physicians (who are denied any intelligence). Men can also share traits when, like Poulain, Sophia denounces the writing of History biased against women (“the most presumptuous and daring of the Men”, “the most obstinate of that sex”). Irony is used to make fun of the author of the “Common sense” and his fellowman, of Cato, of individuals because of men’s contempt for women’s role in children’s education, of moral features (envy and jealousy), of adversary alone. In the second party, envy and jealousy are denounced together when talking about women virtues in everyday life like temperance, patience, and courage; Sophia enumerates jealous men whose victims were women (“Ariosto’s Bradamante, Gonsalo’s Auristilla, Shakespeare’s Othello).

In parallel and in contrast with men, the adjective “generous” is applied to women from the very beginning of the first pamphlet. The charge of corruption is applied to the whole sex in a context that directly associates men with war and injustice and that brings into relief women’s aptitude for law and jobs in that field. Lastly, Sophia criticizes men’s behaviors towards women on the basis of moral failings. If the first pamphlet evokes proofs from “the little meannesses to the grosser barbarities”, the second one provides concrete examples: cunning as a way of preventing girls’ instruction, the inconstance of men who are impressed by women’s external appearances, whereas women, rather than men, are generally reproached for these two weaknesses.

One of the most masculine attitudes is in the term “usurpation” of authority or of superiority, often associated with the adjectives “unjust” and “lawless”. Like Poulain, Sophia focuses on one prejudice: the natural right of superiority of men over women. She exposes the abuses of a usurped masculine authority in the first pamphlet. In the second pamphlet, when man-made law cannot demonstrate the foundation of women’s submission, then her adversary resorts to divine law (in particular when he recalls Eve’s punishment as encompassing all women). The sole justification for such a usurpation is the force of custom which transform usurpation into tyranny.

She dramatizes a power struggle between men and women by using traditional expressions about women, such as “weaker vessels”, “their drudges”, “prey”, “dupes” in the 1st pamphlet; in the 2nd the victimization is more radical: the criticism on men about women is more aware and collective with the expressions “my injured sex”, “my fair partners in oppression”. Unequal treatment begins in cradle and leads girls to interiorize their so-called inferiority. She uses the term “poor” to show victimization (not found in Poulain).

At the beginning of the second pamphlet, Sophia recalls determination to avoid generalization in women’s favour, that could discredit her work. Sophia does not insist on women qualities. When Poulain praises women, so does Sophia, and she emphasizes his compliment by adding the adverb “much”. There is a comparison between men and women about obstacles “men/women participation in public offices”. Attention to balance between merits and wrongs, becoming ironical towards men. Masculine adjective Lord and Judge (rhetorical symmetry). History = examples favourable to women. Poulain re-establishes the balance between man and woman, Sophia praises women so highly that she does a disservice (excess is meaningless) and condemns men, attenuating the praise coming from Poulain text. Sophia denounces generalization and attacks men. The end of the pamphlet is polemical: the exposure of generalization leads to underline men’s cruelty and injustice.

Sophia adheres to Poulain approach, not to his metaphysical idea shown in “De l’excellence des hommes” where he opposes to the general conclusion drawn from small members, and he rejects also particular cases. In the passages where she sets herself free from Poulain’s influence, Sophia is less moderate, more polemical as is proved by her invectives. Sophia prefeminism inverts clichés:

1. Takes the masculine prejudice concerning women’s weakness and applies it to men. She also includes women as well in the usual cliché, which strategically may enable her to better impose her critique
2. Chronological and teleological argument leading to the idea of tutelage. First Sophia reverses the chronological argument: Eve was created second or last’s as God’s masterpiece. She echoes the teleological argument saying that women are made for men. She also plays on men’s argument and reverses them: “Men seem to conclude that all other creatures were made for them because they themselves were not created till all were in readiness for them: so Men were made for women’s use rather than the opposite”; The teleological argument leads to the idea of women’s tutelage: “a little experience is sufficient to demonstrate how much fitter women are to be guardians over men”.

Sophia says that if orders are reasonable, women will obey man yet in her second pamphlet she talks about mutual obedience (men too must obey women if orders are reasonable). She refers more to women superiority over man than to an equality between sexes in the second pamphlet (compare titles). Poulain refers to women’s superiority when he reverses the cliché of women’s frailty, describing it as an advantage, which Sophia echoes and adds a comparative of superiority “Fitter to answer the en