LETTERATURA INGLESE 2

L’ironia: tra strumento e divertimento

Origine parola
- Dal greco antico: ipocrisia o falsità -> dare alle parole il significato opposto a quello
letterale
- In letteratura -> figura retorica in cui vi è discordanza con il vero
- Ironia verbale -> speso usata per enfatizzare l’affermazione di una verità
Il termine deriva dal greco antico e serve per dare alle parole il significato opposto di quello letterale con intento critico.
Quintiliano (I sec. D.C) definisce l’ironia come una figura del linguaggio nella quale si deve intendere il contrario di ciò che
letteralmente si dice.
L’accezione che è arrivata a noi è quella di Socrate, il “fare finta per gioco” : Socrate si dichiara ignorante e chiede lumi all’altrui
sapienza, per poi mostrare come quest’ultima si dimostri inferiore al suo stesso sapere di non sapere - mostrandosi ignorante
costringe l’interlocutore a giustificare la propria posizione fino a rilevarne l’infondatezza.
Attraverso il metodo maieutico , Socrate spinge l’interlocutore a ricercare le risposte dentro di sé, senza la guida intellettuale, ma
attraverso la domanda maieutica del filosofo che professa che l’unica cosa che sa è di non sapere.
Gregory Vlastos definisce l’ironia complessa ( a differenza dell’ironia semplice ove il senso letterale di ciò che si dice è falso es:
uhm grande questa stanza) dove il contenuto superficiale è vero in un senso e falso in un altro. Le sue confutazioni sono false in
apparenza ma poi portando ad una presa di coscienza.
In letteratura viene usata come figura retorica per evidenziare che vi è una qualche discordanza con ciò che è considerato vero e
per portare il lettore ad una presa di coscienza. Le varie forme che l’ironia può assumere in letteratura sono le seguenti:
- il paradosso, un’affermazione che appare contraria al buon senso ma che poi si dimostra valida -
l’iperbole, che esprime un concetto in termini esagerati
- l’invettiva, che serve a rivolgersi a persone o cose con tono aspro di rimprovero o accusa
- l’eufemismo, che adottare un altro termine o espressione per attenuarne una ritenuta cruda o volgare es
andarsene per dire morire
- l’enfasi, che mettere in rilievo una parola un’espressione es: lui, lui si che mi capisce
- l’antifrasi, che serve ad usare parola o espressione in senso contrario con tono ironico es come se gentile
- l’allusione, ovvero dire una cosa per farne intenderne un’altra (“Vittoria di Pirro” per dire una vittoria inutile e pagata a caro
prezzo).

Meccanismi dell’ironia
L’ironia per funzionare deve essere riconoscibile: gli interlocutori devono sapere entrambi di cosa si parla, il sapere entrambi a
cosa si fa riferimento è una condizione indispensabile.
L’ironia serve a mettere in luce una distanza, magari una realtà scomoda, e lo scrittore utilizza l’ironia per veicolare il proprio
punto di vista e portare il lettore ad una presa di coscienza.
Come si concretizza? Attraverso segnali ben precisi che si avvalgono di canali di comunicazione diversi: prosodici (l’intonazione
ironica), mimici, prossemici (gesti del corpo), tutti tra loro interrelati.
L’ironia presuppone sempre un destinatario, altrimenti si perde il dato ironico; invece nell’autoironia, destinatario e parlante
coincidono.

Differenza tra umorismo – comicità – ironia: Pirandello (ne l’umorismo nel 1908 definisce)
L’ironia porta alla comicità. Ma qual è la differenza tra i due concetti?
- La comicità scaturisce naturalmente di fronte ad un evento in cui coesistono elementi contrastanti. Il comico genera
quasi immediatamente la risata perché mostra situazione contraria a quella che dovrebbe essere. = no intervento
razionale.
- L’ironia implica una contraddizione tra quel che si dice e quel che si vuole venga inteso. Il comico e l'ironia generano o
sono generati da situazioni di 'avvertimento del contrario", dal contrasto tra apparenza e realtà. Esprime distacco =
percezione razionale.
E l’umorismo? Questo nasce invece quando in un'opera, accanto al sentimento, che organizza idee e immagini in una forma
armoniosa, resta attiva la riflessione, che ne prende coscienza e la critica. L'umorismo è processo della riflessione critica e
consente di analizzare e di comprendere ciò che si nasconde dietro un fatto o un atteggiamento a prima vista comico. Es : la
Sig.ra di Pirandello tutta truccata (si atteggia così per coprire un deficit). Nasce quindi da una riflessione, porta con sé fragilità
umana, genera una sorta di compassione da cui si origina una sorriso di comprensione. Sorpassa il razionale e si avvicina
all’empatia per sentimento. Ironia e umorismo sono strumenti di comunicazione e presa di coscienza sociale.
Da qui la "poetica dell'umorismo", propria di autori come Pirandello, per cui esiste un meccanismo interno alla persona per cui
essa è spinta a divenire un personaggio. L’idea pirandelliana si basa sul fatto che l’uomo non può capire gli altri nè se stesso:
ognuno vive indossando una maschera dietro la quale sia celano identità diverse. L’uomo accetta la maschera che lui stesso ha
messo e con la quale gli altri lo identificano. Ognuno si pone con una faccia diversa a seconda della situazione proposta.

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
L’Inghilterra del 1600/700/800 è una società in evoluzione, e gli intellettuali inglesi a partire dalla seconda metà del 1600 hanno
cercato di portare la popolazione britannica alla social consciousness tramite la letteratura, i giornali, i pamphlet, e tramite
l’utilizzo dell’ironia.

Cosa vuol dire essere cittadini britannici?

Dobbiamo tenere presente che i cittadini britannici fanno parte di un paese in evoluzione ed in espansione territoriale, e sono in
questo periodo spinti a ridefinirsi a secondo le proprie radici culturali e in rapporto a quanti fanno ora parte della propria patria
politica, ma non fanno parte della stessa genia culturale.
Nei paesi colonizzati, i colonizzatori si legano di più al loro paese di origine:
. per ridurre a livello emotivo la distanza con quella che sentono la loro patria legittima
. per ribadire il proprio prestigio rispetto alle popolazioni conquistate (si fa parte dei dominatori e non dei dominati).
Nascono nuove generazioni di sangue misto, che non sanno dove collocarsi culturalmente (con il popolo originario delle terre o
con i colonizzatori?).
Regno Unito indica un insieme di territori con diverso retaggio storico e culturale, unificati sotto la stessa corona (Inghilterra,
Scozia, Galles, Irlanda). Il 6 marzo 1707 Inghilterra e Scozia si uniscono sotto il nome di Gran Bretagna.
Cosa vuol dire essere "cittadini Britannici"? Rinnegare la propria appartenenza ad una realtà locale, oppure sviluppare una
duplice coscienza del proprio ruolo sociale: da una parte legato alla "piccola Patria" locale e dall'altra pienamente inserito nella
"grande Patria", cui le piccole Patrie fanno capo ? La risposta risiede nel passato > da esso si sono sviluppati i presupposti della
civiltà e della cultura su cui si fonda l'attuale stato delle cose.
Per capire il cambiamento che avviene nella società inglese è il passato che si deve analizzare. Il 600 inglese è una stagione di
rivoluzioni:
- la Corona si oppone al Long Parliament,
- avviene la prima decapitazione in Europa (Charles I Stuart),
- viene instaurata una forma di governo repubblicana con Cromwell.
Successivamente, nella seconda metà del 1600 ed esattamente nel 1688 l’Inghilterra sperimenta la Glorious Revolution, che
stabilisce il principio di democrazia, l’importanza del Parlamento, il concetto di Monarchia si, ma con il controllo del popolo.
Quindi viene abolita la censura, viene sancita la libertà di stampa e viene affermato il principio della libera opinione. E’ una
bloodless revolution, dove si sancisce l’importanza del parlamento insieme alla Corona, che dopo la rivoluzione britannica
culmina nell’Impero Britannico con le sue culture e colonie (melting pot).
Da qui nascono:
- i pamphlets (una forma di invettiva potente). Con la concessione della libertà di stampa, molti letterati cominciano a scrivere
per i giornali, elevando il livello formale degli interventi. L’autore rimaneva anonimo (o anonimo o pseudonimo), per poter
esprimere il proprio pensiero. Il Pamphlet viene usato come strumento di satira e permetteva di affrontare discorsi in modo
forte ed indipendente.
- i giornali, il cui intento è di mettere in luce le pecche della società contemporanea.
- i romanzi, un genere nuovo, che fa una analisi critica della realtà.
Questo porterà nel Settecento alla nascita della satira a volte feroce e alla pubblicazione di saggi di costume: il loro intento
rimane mettere a nudo i meccanismi e le pecche della società contemporanea con lucida consapevolezza. Si guarda la società in
maniera più attenta, si guarda la social consciousness.

I fattori di cambiamento
La forte crescita economica, dovuta alle innovazioni industriali e allo sviluppo coloniale, insieme ai fermenti culturali, dovuti alle
mutate condizioni del Paese, favoriscono l’emergere di nuove abitudine - quali visitare l'Europa e/o le colonie - nelle classi sociali
più agiate, con la conseguente nascita di un’ampia letteratura di resoconti di viaggio che con il passare del tempo diventano
materia per la creazione di saggi e soprattutto romanzi. La letteratura di viaggio affianca la prosa ed il teatro. Questo
cambiamento porta, già dal XVIII secolo, alla professionalizzazione di molti aspetti della cultura legati al fare pratico: giornalismo
e scrittura, grazie alla maggiore diffusione della stampa, d’ora in poi rappresentano lo spazio in cui gli scrittori e i giornalisti
esplicano il loro ruolo di formare la società. Essi infatti ne mettono a nudo gli errori e le mancanze, criticandone i meccanismi che
non funzionano, e spronando l'uomo comune ad elevarsi oltre i limiti che egli stesso si è imposto. Puntano quindi ad un’analisi
critica della realtà. E lo fanno molto più di prima perché da adesso scrivere diventa a tutti gli effetti una professione: i letterati
cominciano a scrivere per denaro. Si parla di utile, di esperienza, denaro e commercio. I valori non sono quelli della nobiltà di
sangue o discendenza, ma ora la cultura diventa una vera e propria attività. Nonostante si aspiri alla nobiltà, il titolo nobiliare
diventa merce perché si può comprare con i propri meriti. E’ un’ascesa fatta di profitto e lavoro; più si parla dell’attività, più si
parla della società. La società vuole che si parli di se stessa. Il mondo ha fame di conoscenza, il progresso è il MUST, perché senza
la conoscenza non si può progredire. E chi percepisce questo must sono gli uomini di lettere.
Si assiste quindi all’ascesa della classe borghese con conseguente indebolimento del ceto aristocratico. Nonostante la nobiltà di
sangue conti ancora formalmente a livello politico per entrare a far parte delle elites di governo di vari paesi, la capacità di far
fruttare la propria posizione comincia a fare la differenza.
Nuove forme letterarie vengono sperimentate a partire dal romanzo, che si fa portavoce dei valori borghesi, rispecchiandone
perfettamente le abitudini e la volontà, quasi sempre scritto con intento moralizzatore su tematiche a sfondo sociale. Le
tecniche utilizzate sono impregnate di sagace ironia e feroce satira, mascherata da appoggio razionale ad una determinata
posizione filosofico-politica. I romanzieri, quindi, utilizzano la propria penna non solo per produrre opere di "letteratura", ma
cominciano a contribuire fattivamente, attraverso i propri scritti, allo sviluppo dell'opinione pubblica.
La sua condizione sociale di appartenenza si sposta dall’aristocrazia alla classe borghese e si fa portavoce dei suoi
ideali politici, sociali e culturali in quanto il suo pubblico è la stessa borghesia di cui fa parte che condivide il suo
mondo ed i suoi problemi.
Col romanzo, che ha l’intento di migliorare la società, i letterati contribuiscono a formare l’opinione pubblica (mentre la
poesie, per sua natura troppo elevata, non riesce ad arrivare a tutti). Conserva un intento moralizzante su tematiche a
sfondo sociale (perché la morale serve per migliorare una condizione sociale traducendosi in satira ed ironia), al
contrario del giornalismo che è critico.
Bisogna anche ricordare che l’enorme pubblico dei romanzi e dei giornali è dovuto ad una diffusione
dell’alfabetizzazione, e alla diffusione, dovuta al basso costo, della carta stampata.

Historical and social background

In 1660 Parliament invites Charles II (1660-1685) to returned to England from his exile in France and the republic was over. He
faced in his first years reign the great plague and the Great fire which reduce the city to nothing. Charles came home because
after the abdication of Cromwell a period of chaos followed and to avoid further awful events Parliament thought that the king
would have brought peace and order. The restoration of monarchy was greeted with a sigh of relief by most Englishmen, who
had felt oppressed in their everyday life by the strict rukes of the Puritans. The restauration of the monarchy also meant the
restoration of the Established Church: in 1662 Parliament reimposed the Book of Prayer and in 1664 all the congregations which
didn’t follow the rules of the Established Church were considered illegal. Also, in 1673 the triumph of the Established Church was
completed with the Test Act which imposed a strict Anglicanism. So, Dissenters and people belonging to the Roman Church were
excluded from public life (except dissenters the occasional conformity).
Charles II tried to hide his Catholic sympathies and was a very astute politician. He always tried to avoid quarrels with Parliament
because he didn’t want to go on his travels again. Unfortunately he couldn’t avoid the question of his succession: parliament
forced him to sign the Exclusion Bill to exclude the Catholic James from the throne. Those facts lead to the division of the
Commons in two parties: the Whigs and the Tories. Tories were conservatives of the period: strong supporter of the king (they
supported James), the Established Church and the Test Act. They were hostile to the new interests. The Whigs were a less
homogeneous group composed by some nobles, jealous of the power of the Crown (they wanted to exclude James from the
throne) merchants, bishop from the Low Church and Dissenters.
Charles II’s court was the most immoral in English history, so when the two catastrophes of the plague and the fire hit the
country, the Puritans interpreted the mas God’s punishment for the King’s immorality. In fact, London was struck in 1665 by an
outbreak of bubonic plague during which more than 100,00 people died. A year later, a fire destroyed most of the city in 4 days.
Cooperation between Crown and Parliament became effective only with the Glorious Revolution. It was so called because of the
bloodlessness of the event. James II (1685-1688 he succedeed Charles I) wanted to impose Catholic religion on a country which
was for the most part protestant. Rebellions broke out without success. There was an atmosphere of crisis when he issued a
Declaration of Indulgence towards his coreligionists in 1687. The birth of James’ son changed the line of succession and many
feared that a Catholic dynasty in England was imminent.
Thus Parliament made secret arrangements to depose him. In 1642 Parliament offeed the crown to the Protestant William of
Orange, James’s nephew. In 1689 he and his wife Mary were established a joint monarchs and James II went to France. The reign
of William and Mary was a time of economic progress for England. London was fast becoming the financial capital of the world.
The events of 1688 signed the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution. William and Mary joined the throne, they were obliged to sign
the Bill of Rights (1689), that limited the power of the king in favour of Parliament, and the Toleration Act (1689) which gave
freedom of worship to all dissenters, expect of Catholics, and the Act of Settlement (1701) which stated that catholic monarchs
were excluded from the throne.
The reign of Queen Anne saw the victory of Tories who ruled England till 1714. The three George that reigned over England saw
a nation increasing its wealth through trade and industrialization.
The return of Charles II marked the end of the Puritan Age (1625-1660) and the beginning of the Restoration (1660-1702). The
theatres were re-opened and the sober, restrained way of living adopted by the Puritans were replaced by licentiousness and
immorality. The habit of wearing masks and disguise became increasingly widespread among the nobility. Marriage became to
be seen as one of the quickest and easiest means of acquiring or increasing family property. Cynism and libertinism spread hand
in hand with a certain taste for elegance and affectation. Censorship of books and pamphlets was abolished in 1692 and the
freedom of the press finally materialized. Sunday school were opened and the most rudimentary elements of education were
taught to more and more people.

Eighteenth century literature

The literature of the period between 1660-1785 can be considered as falling into three periods.
- the first one extending from 1660 till the death of Dryden in 1700, the neoclassical critical principles were formulated
- the second one ending with the death of Pope in 1744 and Swift 1745 which saw a culmination of the literary movement
started by Dryden
- the third one concluding with the death of Johnson in 1784.
Literary production
All literature was affected by the new spirit of time. Imagination was slowly replaced by reason. Writers began to look for new
models to follow, and found them in the great classics of the past and in certain contemporary French authors. The foundation
of the Royal Society in 1662 greatly contributed to the improvement of the prose.
English became simpler and more accurate. Poetry suffered a decline in this period that was dominated by Drama. At this
time there were only love songs, ballads, philosophical and religious poems. But one genre prevailed over all others: the
satire. Drama was probably the branch of literature which best mirrored Restoration England. Drama included three main
genres: the heroic play, the tragedy, and the comedy. People went to the theatre to be amused and not to think, they wanted
humour, wit and elegance. The Heroic play had its main representative in Dryden. It was elaborate and elegant, written in
imitation of epic and heroic poems. Honour and patriotism played leading roles, together with love. The tragedies marked a
return of the Elizabethan theatre. The best expression of the new spirit of the time was undoubtedly comedy that reflected
above all the dissolute life of the Court and the aristocracy. The plots were complicated by the presence of numerous
subplots, which involved a large number of characters. This playwrights focused their attention not so much on the social
origin of their characters, as on the way they behaved. A new type of male character was created, the “fop” (damerino), as
opposed to the “gallant” or fortunate lover, usually the hero of the play, elegant and witty but cynical. As to the heroine, she
was acquainted with fashion than morals. The Restoration playwrights aimed to amusing and entertaining, for this reason the
comedy of this period were called comedy of manners, because they focused on the social behaviour of the characters.
Restoration comedy were written in prose. Marriage was one of the main ingredient for creating intrigue, piquant situations
or simply a conventional happy ending to the play. Love was usually absent, sex and feelings are privileged.

John Dryden 1631 – 1700

John Dryden was an English poet, critic, and playwright active in the second half of the 17th century. Over the span of nearly 40
years, he dabbled in a wide range of genres to great success and acclaim. As a poet, Dryden is best known as a satirist and was
England's first poet laureate in 1668. In addition to satires, Dryden wrote elegies, prologues, epilogues, odes, and panegyrics. His
most famous poem is Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Dryden was so influential in Restoration England that the period was
known to many as the Age of Dryden, was made England's first Poet Laureate.
Born at a vicarage in Northampshire in 1631, Dryden was the son of parliamentary supporters, but exhibited royalist sympathies
early. His poem “Upon the Death of Lord Hastings” supports a royalist agenda. Three years after graduating from Trinity College,
Cambridge, he moved to London and wrote his "Heroic Stanzas" in 1659. After writing the poem "Annus Mirabilis" in 1667,
Dryden was named poet laureate of England.
Dryden wrote plays throughout the 1670s, and was at the forefront of Restoration comedy. His best-known plays were Marriage
à la Mode in 1673 and All for Love in 1678. However, his plays were never as successful as his poetry, and he eventually turned
back to satires. In the satires that he wrote, Dryden often took aim at the Whigs, which earned him attention from Charles II. In
the 1680s, Dryden converted to Catholicism and set to work criticizing the Anglican church, which ultimately lost him the
position of Poet Laureate.At the end of his career, Dryden returned to theatrical writing and also took up translation. He died in
1700 from gout.
"Absalom and Achitophel" includes more than 1,000 poems. These poems allegorically depict the political struggle in England at
that time. For example, the biblical legend of the rebellious son of King David serves as an allegory for the history of the struggle
of the Whigs against the so-called "Catholic conspiracy."

William Congreve 1670 - 1729

He was an English playwright and poet of the Restoration period. He is known for his clever, satirical dialogue and influence on
the comedy of manners style of that period. He was also a minor political figure in the British Whig Party. William Congreve
shaped the English comedy of manners through his use of satire and well-written dialogue. Congreve achieved fame in 1693
when he wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period. This period was distinguished by the fact that
female roles were beginning to be played predominantly by women, and was evident in Congreve's work. One of Congreve's
favourite actresses was Mrs. Anne Bracegirdle, who performed many of the female lead roles in his plays.
His first play The Old Bachelor, written to amuse himself while convalescing, was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in
1693. It was recognized as a success, and ran for a two-week period when it opened. Congreve's mentor John Dryden gave the
production rave reviews and proclaimed it to be a brilliant first piece. Congreve's career as a playwright was successful but brief.
He only wrote five plays, authored from 1693 to 1700, in total. This was partly in response to changes in taste, as the public
turned away from the sort of high-brow sexual comedy of manners in which he specialized.

The Way Of The World

Before the play begins, a number of important events have taken place in the lives of the main characters, which Congreve
reveals throughout the play. Arabella’s first husband, Languish, has died and left her his fortune. She begins a secret affair with
Edward Mirabell. They end the affair and she gets married to a man Mirabell has selected (Fainall) because Mirabell is afraid
that they will conceive a child out of wedlock (Congreve never explains why Mirabell just doesn’t marry her himself). Mirabell
and Mrs. Arabella Fainall remain good friends after the affair ends.
Mirabell begins courting Mrs. Fainall’s cousin, Millamant, who lives with Millamant’s aunt and Mrs. Fainall’s mother, Lady
Wishfort. To gain Wishfort’s favor for his marriage to Millamant, Mirabell flatters Wishfort and lavishes much attention on her.
Wishfort becomes convinced that he loves her and falls for him. However, after Wishfort’s best friend, Mrs. Marwood, reveals
what Mirabell was up to, her feelings for Mirabell change from love to hate. Now, she will not grant her permission for Mirabell
to marry Millamant, an important problem because she controls Millamant’s £6,000 dowry.

The night before the first scene of the play, the first time Mirabell has gone back to Wishfort’s house since she found out his
plan, Wishfort unceremoniously dismisses Mirabell from her “cabal night” club in front of Millamant, who doesn’t stand up for
him, and a number of other people. Undiscouraged, Mirabell has already begun hatching a plan to coerce Wishfort into
accepting the marriage, a plan that Millamant learns all about through Foible.

While all this is going on, Fainall has been having an affair with his wife’s and Lady Wishfort’s friend, Mrs. Marwood.
Mirabell is the only one who suspects that this is going on. Foible and Mincing have witnessed the affair but have been
sworn to secrecy by Marwood.

Unfolding in a single day, the play begins in the morning. Mirabell is waiting for word that his servant, Waitwell, and Wishfort’s
servant, Foible, have gotten married according to his plan. In the meanwhile, he is playing cards with his enemy, Fainall. Mirabell
hints that he knows that Fainall and Marwood are having an affair. But he also reveals to Fainall his love for both Millamant’s
strengths and weaknesses of character. Hearing this, Fainall encourages him to marry her.
Later, the two men are joined by Witwoud and Petulant. Mirabell learns from the two that last night, Wishfort discussed
her plan to marry Millamant off to his uncle, Sir Rowland, in order to
disinherit Mirabell from his uncle’s fortune (we do not yet know that Sir Rowland isn’t a real person and that this is all actually
part of Mirabell’s plan).

Mirabell’s plan is going well until Marwood, while hiding in a closet, overhears Mrs. Fainall and Foible discussing Mirabell’s
entire plan and learns exactly what he’s up to. She shares this news
with Fainall and they concoct a plan to ruin Mirabell and blackmail Wishfort.

That same afternoon at Wishfort’s house, Millamant also accepts Mirabell’s proposal and rejects
the proposal of Sir Wilfull, whom Lady Wishfort wanted her to marry.

Together, Marwood and Fainall begin to counteract Mirabell’s plan. They reveal Foible’s betrayal and Sir Rowland’s true
identity (Waitwell) to Wishfort, and Fainall has Waitwell arrested. He threatens Wishfort that unless she surrenders her
fortune, including Millamant and Mrs. Fainall’s shares, he will reveal Mrs. Fainall’s affair with Mirabell to the town, which
would bring great
disgrace to her family. He also demands that Wishfort herself agree never to get married (unless he permits it).

Mrs. Wishfort thinks she has found a loophole in Fainall’s plan when she learns that Millamant and Sir Wilfull have agreed to get
married. However, Fainall is undeterred because he can still gain
control of Wishfort and her wife’s fortunes.

All seems lost for Wishfort and her family until Mirabell steps in. Before he offers his help, he has Wishfort promise that she
will let him marry Millamant, which she readily does.

Then, he calls forward first Mincing and Foible to reveal the affair between Fainall and Mrs.
Marwood. Wishfort is dissatisfied that this is Mirabell’s trump card but Mirabell has one more trick.
He calls forward Waitwell, who brings with him a deed to all of Arabella Languish’s property.
Before marrying Fainall, Mirabell and Arabella suspected that Fainall might try to cheat her, so Arabella agreed to sign over
her fortune to Mirabell as a precaution. As her trustee, Mirabell still
controls her fortune and the legally binding document thus preempts Fainall’s claim on his wife’s fortune.

With Fainall and Marwood beaten and Mrs. Fainall and Wishfort’s fortunes and reputations saved, Sir Wilfull releases Millamant
from the engagement so she can marry Mirabell and he can continue with his plans to travel. Mirabell returns the deed to
Arabella and tells her to use it to control a very upset and vengeful Fainall.

The Problem of the Plot

Because of its striking characterization and brilliant dialogue, The Way of the World is generally considered to be the finest
example of Restoration comedy, as well as one of the last. Nevertheless, it was not successful when it was first presented in
1700. Although the English audiences, unlike the French, were accustomed to plots and subplots and to a great deal of action in
their plays, they were confused by the amount of activity crammed into a single day. The Way of the World had only a single
action to which everything was related, but it included a scheme, and a counterplot to frustrate the scheme, and then moves to
foil the counterplot. There were too many episodes, events, reversals, and discoveries, most of them huddled in the last acts,
and they demanded too much of the audience. If the difficulty was ever overcome in a performance, it was only when actors
and director were completely conscious of their problem. Although there seems to be the usual happy ending to this comedy,
The Way of the World leaves a number of loose ends that add to the confusion. It is difficult to see where Mrs. Fainall's future is
satisfactorily resolved. At one point in Act V, she says that this is the end of her life with Fainall; that is one comfort. But at the
end of the play, it seems that she will continue to live with Fainall in an obviously very awkward domestic situation.
Characters

• Mirabell A young man-about-town, in love with Millamant.

• Millamant A young, very charming lady, in love with, and loved by, Mirabell. She is the ward of Lady Wishfort because
she is the niece of Lady Wishfort's long-dead husband. She is a first cousin of Mrs. Fainall.
• Fainall A man-about-town. He and Mirabell know each other well, as people do who move in the same circles.
However, they do not really like each other. Fainall married his wife for her money.
• Mrs. Fainall Wife of Fainall and daughter of Lady Wishfort. She was a wealthy young widow when she married
Fainall. She is Millamant's cousin and was Mirabell's mistress, presumably after her first husband died.
• Mrs. Marwood Fainall's mistress. It does appear, however, that she was, and perhaps still is, in love with Mirabell.
This love is not returned.
• Young Witwoud A fop. He came to London from the country to study law but apparently found the life of the
fashionable man-about-town more pleasant. He has pretensions to being a wit. He courts Millamant, but not
seriously; she is merely the fashionable belle of the moment.
• Petulant A young fop, a friend of Witwoud's. His name is indicative of his character.
• Lady Wishfort A vain woman, fifty-five years old, who still has pretensions to beauty. She is the mother of Mrs.
Fainall and the guardian of Millamant. She is herself in love with Mirabell, although she is now spiteful because he
offended her vanity.
• Sir Wilfull Witwoud The elder brother of Young Witwoud, he is forty years old and is planning the grand tour of
Europe that was usually made by young men to complete their education. He is Lady Wishfort's nephew, a distant,
non-blood relative of Millamant's, and Lady Wishfort's choice as a suitor for Millamant's hand.
• Waitwell Mirabell's valet. At the beginning of the play, he has just been married to Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid. He
masquerades as Sir Rowland, Mirabell's nonexistent uncle, and woos Lady Wishfort.
• Foible Lady Wishfort's maid, married to Waitwell.
• Mincing Millamant's maid.
• Peg A maid in Lady Wishfort's house

The Augustan Age 1702 – 1745/60

The Augustan era, sometimes referred to as misleadingly as Georgian period can be recognised in the reigns of Queen Anne,
King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and it ends in the 1740s, with the deaths of Alexander Pope and
Jonathan Swift, in 1744 and 1745, respectively.

Social and historical background

The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set up a new rule for
succession to the British throne that would always prefer Protestantism over consanguinity. That had brought William III and
Mary II to the throne instead of James II.
Queen Anne succeeded his brother in law William III and her sister Mary. Anne's reign saw two wars. During her reign Scotland
and England became officially united with the Act of Union. After Mary, the first Hanover (he succeded that of The Stuarts) king
came to the throne, George the I, who started the Augustan Age. George I spoke poor English, and his isolation from the English
people was instrumental in keeping his power relatively irrelevant. His son, George II, on the other hand, spoke some English
and some more French, and his rule was the first full Hanoverian rule in England. Generally regarded as a golden age, the 18th
century in England is called Augustan after the period of Roman history whcih had achived political stability and power.
By then, the powers of Parliament had silently expanded, and his power was perhaps only equal to that of Parliament. George I
left the government of the country in the hands of ministers, the king was then supposed to choose his ministers and both he
and his successor, George II, chose them from the Whig party. The Whig ad the Tories were the first political parties and the
first prime minister was Sir Robert Walpole. Their name was taken from the 17th century Irish outlaws who killed English
settlers. They supported the divine right of monarchy and opposed religious toleration; the Church of England and the
landwowners sided with them. The Whigs, a rude name for “cattle drivers”emerged as descendants of the Parlamentarians.
They pressed for industrial and commercial development, supported finance and trade, freedom of the press, religious
toleration and a policy of peace, which gave England prosperity and political progress. They were supported by many of the
wealthy and commercial classes. Manufactured, commerce and agriculture, as well as art and literature, prospered. They used
to meet without the King, their meeting developed into the kind of government by Cabinet, which Britain still has today. At
forst, all Cabinet were equal but then, come of them began to lead the others. The leading minister in the Cabinet is the Prime
Minister. So, the first P.M. was Sir ROBERT WALPOLE that wa sin power for over 20 years. He managed to keep England out of
foreign conflicts so that trade could flourish. When the new King, George II came to the throne, he gave Walpole the House in
Westminster, 10 Downing Street which is still the official residence of the P.M.
When George II came to the throne after a long period of peace, England took part in the War of the Austrian Succession and
won. In 1756 the Seven years war broke out, this war enabled England to gain control of North America and a large part of
England. Another important conquest was that of Canada, that gave supremacy to England.
It was an age increasingly dominated by empiricism, while in the writings of political economy, it marked the evolution of
mercantilism as a formal philosophy, the development of capitalism and the triumph of trade. In Walpole’s England, there were
already teh signs of the forthcoming Industrial Revolution. Divison of Labour made English cloth-making a national industry. In
1735 the Whig William Pitt entered the Parliament as an opponent of Walpole and started a mercantilistic policy to make
England a strong and economically competitive country. This led to the establishment of a new set of values based on power,
wealth and prestige. The new bourgeois man of Pitt’s age would be reflected in Robinson Crusoe.
The new Augustan period exhibited exceptionally bold political writings in all genres, with the satires of the age marked by an
arch and ironic pose. While the period is generally known for its adoption of highly regulated and stylised literary forms, some of
the concerns of writers of this period foreshadowed the preoccupations of the later Romantic era. In general, philosophy,
politics and literature underwent a turn away from older courtly concerns towards something closer to a modern sensibility.
But why the term Augustan? Because of the strongly influence of the ancient past that can be compared to the similar situation
between England and the Roman Empire: peace after Augustus and peace after Charles (except for James but no blood). Its chief
poets were Virgil, Horace, Juvenal. The emphasis was on correct appropriate discipline. Alexander Pope, who had been imitating
Horace, wrote an Epistle to Augustus that was in fact addressed to George II of Great Britain and seemingly endorsed the notion
of his age being like that of Augustus, when poetry became more mannered, political and satirical than in the era of Julius
Caesar.
One of the most critical elements of the 18th century was the increasing availability of printed material, both for readers and
authors. Books fell in price dramatically and used books were sold. That was furthered with the establishment of periodicals,
including The Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine. That was compounded by the end of the Press Restriction Act in
1693, which created a printing structure that was no longer under government control. All types of literature were spread
quickly in all directions. Newspapers began and even multiplied. Furthermore, the newspapers were immediately compromised,
as the political factions created their own newspapers, planted stories and bribed journalists. Leading clerics had their sermon
collections printed, which were top selling books. Periodicals were exceedingly popular, and the art of essay writing was at
nearly its apex. Furthermore, the happenings of the Royal Society were published regularly, and they were digested and
explained or celebrated in more popular presses. The latest books popularised, summarised and explained events to a wide
audience. Books of etiquette, of correspondence and of moral instruction and hygiene multiplied. Economics began as a serious
discipline but did so in the form of numerous "projects" for solving England, Ireland and Scotland's ills.
The positive side of the explosion in information was that the 18th century was markedly more generally educated than the
centuries before. Education was less confined to the upper classes than it had been in prior centuries so contributions to science,
philosophy, economics, and literature came from all parts of the kingdom. It was an age of "enlightenment" in the sense that the
insistence and drive for reasonable explanations of nature and mankind was a rage. It was an "age of reason" in that it was an
age that accepted clear, rational methods as superior to tradition.

Social Background

Controversies and diversities of opinion were now discussed in the newspapers that sprang up at this time. Journalism grew in
importance and became one of the main means of information. With its variety of essays and articles, moreover, it helped to
mold the mentality of the country. Private and literary club were opened, along with public coffee houses that became the real
center of social life, the best forum for discussion and the circulation of news, as well as for business transaction. Consisting in
traders, merchants, bankers and other professional men, the middle class was growing in power and prestige. Money and
prosperity contrasted with poverty and squalor, sanitation was virtually unknown caused illness and diseases. Violence and
drunkenness were common among the poorer classes. Toleration and stability order became very important, as well as
discipline and balance. Reason and common sense prevailed over emotions and increasing importance was given to education.
The artisans and craftsmen filled the gap between the upper classes and the poor. They worked long hours for a very low rage.
Below them was the mass of the urban population who had no political rights and lived in terrible conditions. Disease like
smallpoz, scurvy and typhus affected the poorest areas. Those who survive were hired as apprentices by the parishes from the
age of 7. Many of them became chimney-sweepers. For adult people, the parishes built the workhouses where they were
maintained at public expenses. So, many of them took to drinking gin and organized crime grew amiong the unemployed.
Circulating libraries were organized. For middle class people, money and education came hand in hand with a need to improve
their manners and language. To be elegant and refined became almost a duty, and even married their children into their ranks
in order to improve their own status. Women began a process of emancipation. Better educated and with more leisure time,
middle class women began to develop a taste for books. In literature the main tendency of the time was “realism” that means
the treatment of events described with fidelity to real life. Authors way of writing was ordered, polished and elegant, clear and
precise, simple enough to be understand by readers. This type of language was exploited above all in the prose production. As
for poetry, new models were sought and found among ancient classical masters who had flourished under the Emperor
Augustus. For this reason this period is called Enlightment or Augustan age.
It was a materialist and pragmatic society that looked for individualism, seizing opportunities in the sectors of economy whcih
provided scope for enrichment. The state did not deal in abstarction such as social justice, equality or fraternity.

History and literature

It was a literary epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel, an explosion in satire, the mutation of drama from
political satire into melodrama.
The literature of the 18th century, particularly the early 18th century, which is what "Augustan" most commonly indicates, is
explicitly political in ways that few others are. Those who wrote poetry, novels, and plays were frequently either politically active
or politically funded. The aristocratic ideal of an author so noble as to be above political concerns was largely archaic and
irrelevant. The period may be an "Age of Scandal", as authors dealt specifically with the crimes and the vices of their world.
Satire, in prose, drama and poetry, was the genre that attracted the most energetic and voluminous writing. The satires that
were produced during the Augustan period were frequently specific critiques of specific policies, actions and persons. Therefore,
it was an ideal method of attack for ironists and conservatives—those who would not be able to enunciate a set of values to
change toward but could condemn present changes as ill-considered. Satire was present in all genres during the Augustan
period. Every significant politician and political act had satires to attack it. Few of these were parodic satires, but parodic satires,
too, emerged in political and religious debate. So omnipresent and powerful was satire in the Augustan age that more than one
literary history has referred to it as the "Age of satire" in literature. Then the Augustan era is considered a high point of British
satiric writing and the authors were writing for an informed audience.

During this period there was a particular type of poetry. This was essentially philosophical and elaborate, mainly based on
rational sentiments and generally expressed in precise and elegant couplets. It was more interested in universal truth than
imagination or personal experience. Even when feelings and emotions intruded into the lines they were always to be controlled
by reason. The influence of the classics favored the growth of satire. There were many poetic genres which developed in this
age (odes, satire, pastorals etc), but among the most successful were the mock-epic or mock-heroic poem and the town
eclogue, that parodied epic poetry by applying epic formulas and heroic style to trivial subjects resulting in social satire.

Other literary – Prose: essays and journalism

The essay, satire, and dialogue thrived in the age, and the English novel was truly begun as a serious art form. Furthermore,
literacy was not confined to men, though rates of female literacy are very difficult to establish. For those who were literate,
circulating libraries in England began in the Augustan period. Libraries were open to all, but they were mainly associated with
female patronage and novel reading.
English essayists were aware of Continental models, but they developed their form independently from that tradition, and
periodical literature grew between 1692 and 1712.
Periodicals were inexpensive to produce, quick to read, and a viable way of influencing public opinion, and consequently there
were many broadsheet periodicals headed by a single author and staffed by hirelings (so-called "Grub Street" authors). One
periodical outsold and dominated all others, however, and that was The Spectator, written by Joseph Addison and Richard
Steele. The Spectator developed a number of pseudonymous characters, including "Mr. Spectator," Roger de Coverley, and
"Isaac Bickerstaff", and both Addison and Steele created fictions to surround their narrators. The dispassionate view of the world
(the pose of a spectator, rather than participant) was essential for the development of the English essay, as it set out a ground
wherein Addison and Steele could comment and meditate upon manners and events. Samuel Johnson offered insights into the
follies of human nature and moral perseverance. The English essayist could be an honest observer and his reader's peer. After
the success of The Spectator, more political periodicals of comment appeared. However, the political factions and coalitions of
politicians very quickly realized the power of this type of press, and they began funding newspapers to spread rumours.

Other literary forms – the Poetry

Throughout the Augustan era the "updating" of Classical poets was a commonplace. These were not translations, but rather
they were imitations of Classical models, and the imitation allowed poets to veil their responsibility for the comments they
made.
The entire Augustan age's poetry was dominated by Pope. He had few poetic rivals, but he had many personal enemies and
political, philosophical, or religious opponents, and Pope himself was quarrelsome in print. Pope and his enemies (often called
"the Dunces" because of Pope's successful satirizing of them in The Dunciad) fought over central matters of the proper subject
matter for poetry and the proper pose of the poetic voice.
In satire, Pope achieved two of the greatest poetic satires of all time in the Augustan period. The Rape of the Lock (1712 and
1714) was a gentle mock-heroic. Pope applies Virgil's heroic and epic structure to the story. The structure of the comparison
between the rape of the lock and Helena di Menelao forces Pope to invent mythological forces to overlook the struggle, and so
he creates an epic battle, complete with a mythology of sylphs and metempsychosis.

One of the scabrous satirical prints directed against Pope after his Dunciad of 1727. A decade after the gentle, laughing satire of
The Rape of the Lock, Pope wrote his masterpiece of invective and specific opprobrium in The Dunciad. The story is that of the
goddess Dulness choosing a new Avatar. She settles upon one of Pope's personal enemies, Lewis Theobald, and the poem
describes the coronation and heroic games undertaken by all of the dunces of Great Britain in celebration of Theobald's
ascension. When Pope's enemies responded to The Dunciad with attacks, Pope produced the Dunciad Variorum, with a
"learned" commentary upon the original Dunciad. In 1743, he added a fourth book and changed the hero from Lewis Theobald
to Colley Cibber. In the fourth book of the new Dunciad, Pope expressed the view that, in the battle between light and dark
(enlightenment and the Dark Ages), Night and Dulness were fated to win, that all things of value were soon going to be
subsumed under the curtain of unknowing.

Other literary forms – Drama

Drama was the most important art and especially comedy which represented the social behaviour of the fashionable middle
classes. Indeed after the Puritan age theatre were opened again and people went just to be amused and not to think. They
wanted humour, wit and elegance. Comedy was elaborate and elegant, written in imitation of epic and heroic poems where
honour and patriotism played leading roles, together with love. The best expression of the new spirit of the time was
undoubtedly comedy that reflected above all the dissolute life of the Court and the aristocracy. The plots were complicated by
the presence of numerous subplots, which involved a large number of characters. This playwrights focused their attention not so
much on the social origin of their characters, as on the way they behaved. As to the heroine, she was acquainted with fashion
than morals. The Restoration playwrights aimed to amusing and entertaining, for this reason the comedy of this period were
called comedy of manners, because they focused on the social behaviour of the characters. Restoration comedy were written in
prose. Marriage was one of the main ingredient for creating intrigue, piquant situations or simply a conventional happy ending
to the play. Love was usually absent, sex and feelings are privileged. The main concern of the
was to bring the moral and the social behaviour of society aspects to the comic laughter. In comedies the principal hero lives for
pleasure not for military glory. This new type of male character, the “fop” (damerino), was to be opposed to the “gallant” or
fortunate lover, usually the hero of the play, elegant and witty but cynical.

The Rise of the Novel

The literature of the 18th century reflected the economic and intellectual progress of the period and an increasing popular
interest in reading. Lending, or circulating, libraries acquired great importance and since subscriptions were moderately priced,
they led to an increase in the reading public. More printed items were produced, literacy increased (60% of the adult male and
40% of the adult female population could read) and more and more readers belonged to the middle and lower classes. People
preferred prose to verse and drama. The growing importance of the middle classes, both in the politicak and social field, deeply
affected the cultural outlook of the period and influenced the development of the prose genre. The belief in the power of reason
and the individual’s trust in his own abilities found expression in the novel. People liked reading about the practical needs of
different trades, stories of pirates and thieves, books dealing with journeys to distant countries, accounts of crime, political
pamphlets and newspapers. Writing became a profession ruled by economic criteria, and the value of an author his own abilities
found expression in the novel. By definition, a novel is 'a long prose narrative about largely fictional, if usually realistic,
characters and plausible events'. The 18th-century novelist was the spokesman of the middle class. The realism of the novel was
not linked to the kind of life presented, but to the way it was shown. The writer's primary aim was to write in a simple way in
order tobe understood even by less well-educated readers. The novel, which was primarily concerned with everything that could
alter social status, was particularly appealing to the practical-minded tradesman, who was self-made and self-reliant. The sense
depended on the number of pages he or she wrote. The belief in the power of reason and the individual's trust in of reward and
punishment, which was the 'message' of the novel itself, was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle classes.

Other literary forms – The Rise of the Novel

The modern Novel
The term derives from the Italian "novella" > it indicates a "new" prose fiction:

• original, opposed to tradition stories

• reporting "recent" events

There had been novels in English literature before XVIII century (Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Sidney's Arcadia, Lyly's Euphues,
Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress).

XVIII century > modern sense of the word: "A fictitious prose narrative of considerable length, in which characters and
actions reresentative of real life are portrayed in a more or less complex plot".
In the previous culture, for example, the plot of classical and renaissance epic was based on past history or fable and the merits
of the author derived from the accepted models in the genre. Now everything is based on realism, the real aspects of society,
not in an historical way, but believable. Indeed, this literary traditionalism was challenged by the novel, whose primary aspect
was the individual experience, always unique and new. The novel becomes thus a vehicle of modern culture and set a gap
through its originality.
Characterization of protagonists: defying the individual person through proper names. These proper names are the verbal
expression of identity of each person. Name and surname are given to characters, for example Robinson Crusoe is a real person
that owns things, he is an individual with his own characteristics. Much more attention is given to the particularity of people and
writers present characters by naming them in exactly the same way as in ordinary life. The novel portrays chacarcters and events
of the real life belonging to both past or present times; they pertain to common life and their actions can be related to common
experience. Of course also in the past works characters had their names, but they were mainly historical or invented and were
supposed to be characteristic. So the early novelist breake with traditions and name their characters as they were to be
regarded as a particular individual in the contemporary environment.
Of course there is another factor that accomplishes the individualization of characters: time. Here there is a separation from the
traditional use of timeless stories. In the novel past experience are analysed and put into words as a result and cause of present
actions. The role of time in the ancient, medieval literature is very different from that in the novel because the past one didn’t
give the temporal dimension in human life. Times is scheduled and there are many details in description such as names of
streets, places, references to days and times of the days.
Related to time is space. Novelists put their characters into physical environment. There are description of outdoor settings and
interiors. Attention to the interiors, for example, is a mean of conveying the idea of realism and individualization and it gives us
an idea of which are the characters’ resources and lifestyle. In addition, time and space were realised through the use of an
authentic type of language which have to give an realistic account of contemporary society. Novels are based on Realism like
they attempt to define in detail and with great accuracy all elements of everyday life: houses, furniture, goods, habits,
conversations. People need to believe the story should be real and novels need to be believable and reliable. That’s why novels
aim at giving the impression of real life described with a simple language in prose.
Another aspect we have to take into consideration for the rise of the novel is the increase of the reading public. Libraries opened
around 1742 and journals became as famous as books. People were able and willing to read books thanks to the diffusion of
print, newspapers and libraries because many people couldn’t afford buying books. Of course we are talking about middle and
upper classes such as trade-men, financiers and so on. In fact labourers and poor children from lower classes went to school but
for a very short period of time since there was labour to be done in the fields. Instead, women started reading and they were
proved to be the best readers. They are enthusiastic about them because they see their real world with its values which were
very close to their social class such as bourgeois values (money, social advancement and justice), chivalric values (honour, glory),
traditional gentleman's value (good manners, fashion. They are the typical British values and we need to prove ourselves in
every occasion. For examole Robinson needs to prove he is a gentleman under every cicumstances). Money is a status symbol
that gives us the measure of the success of a person. (Influence of Picaresque narrative such as Don Quixote that is an anti-
chivalric novel, there is a change in social values, everyday troubles were the most efficacious). They like stories of pirates and
thieves, books dealing with journeys to distant countries, accounts of crime, political pamphlets and newspapers. These new
heros are different from the adventurous heros of the romances because they had heroic attitudes, whereas these are ordinary
men but they need to proove that thay are able to survive. The protagonist was always a practical-minded tradesman, who was
self-made and self-reliant, joined by their common sense, prudence and taste for adventure. Here the main belief was in the
power of reason and in the individual's trust in reward, which was the 'message' of the novel itself related to the Puritan ethics
of the middle classes. The importance here is on work and daily activities resembling the possibility for Man to save himself
through his own faith and efforts (Methodism). The reason why they fought against everyday troubles gives the strenght to go
on. What was important was the behaviour: a man that didn’t work nor produce, he couldn’t receive the grace of God and he
couldn’t be safe.

Daniel Defoe (uncertain date of birth – 1731) Born Daniel Foe

He was an English writer, journalist (pioneer of the economical journalism), pamphleteer and also a trade man.
His date of birth is unknown. What we know is that his parents were dissenters (Protestants who did not belog to the Anglican
Church) and that before he was 7 years old he saw many disaster going on around London such as the Great Plague (1665
70,000 people were killed) and the Great Fire ( 1666). At the age of 13, he lost his mother.
Defoe was raised as a dissenter and he could not be admitted to Oxford nor Cambridge but he received 3 years of higher
education by the reverend Charles Morton who taught him science, modern tongue and the intricacies of English rhetoric.
One an adult, he became a merchant dealing with hosiery, general woollen goods and wine. Unfortunately, since his financial
dealings were not always honest, he always had debts. This was the plague of his life.
In 1684 he married Mary Tuffley (They had 8 children, 6 of whom surived.), 1685 he took part in the Manmouth Rebellion
against James II and in 1692 he was arrested for debts. Once released, he started travelling for work. By 1695 ha was back to
England using the name “Defoe”.
Defoe's first notable publication was An Essay upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement,
published in 1697.
In 1697 he supported King William III in “The True-Born Englishman”, the most successful poem in which he defended the king
against the xenophobia of his enemies satirising the English claim for racial purity. According to Defoe, England was already a
mix of population so it made no sense complaining.
In 1701 he made his political appearance and in 1703 he was arrested again for the pamphlet “The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters”, which brought him to the pillory. In this pamphlet he mocks the Anglican Church and pretended to argue for the
extermination of all Dissenters. So it’s mainly a cruel satire of both the Church and the Tories against the “occasional
conformity”. According to legend, his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of
harmful objects, and to drink to his health. Most scholars question the historicity of this facts.
After his release, he became a spy for the Tory government After his three days in the pillory, Defoe was moved to Newgate
Prison. Robert Harley brokered his release in exchange for his co-operation as an intelligence agent for the Tory Government
and since he changed his political side he was considered as a diabolic journalist. This new secret and dangerous career
provided him with new skills which he was able to transfer into his writing.
In his own days Defoe was regarded as an unscrupulous, diabolical journalist. His political writings were widely read and made
him powerful enemies.
Between 1719-1724 he published some of his most important novels such as Robinson Crusoe (1719), Captain Singletone (1720),
Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders (1722) and finally Roxana (1724).
In all his work he described characters castaway from society that represented the middle class people whose main
idea was the one of going on and achieving something only with their own effort, using the skills of the new Engliah
contemporary society. Since he was engaged to life, he represented a detailed picture of his contemporary society through the
use of irony and satire so that people could make their own social consciousness.
He died in 1731 hiding from creditors.
Daniel Defoe died on April 24, 1731, probably hiding from his creditors, He was buried in Bunhill Fields, London. Defoe is
supposed to have used more than 198 different pen names to sign his writings. e.g. Eye Witness, T. Taylor, and Andrew
Morton, Merchant. His most unusual pen name was Heliostrapolis, secretary to the Emperor of the Moon,' used on his
political satire The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705).

Conclusions

• Defoe spreads his writing activity experimenting various fields of the literary profession. He skilfully moves among
different types of prose (and some poetry).
• He is able to paint a detailed picture of contemporary society, most times through an intelligent use of irony.
Through irony and satire he made people feel conscious about the world in which they live, using all media at
his disposal.
• Though his professional choice does not grant him a reliable living, he sticks to it up to the end of his life.
("Intellectual mission" towards society and himself)
• The events he witnessed provided him the materials for writing (genione experience, believable characters in realistic
situations using simple prose, vivid imagination and industrial rhythms in writing)

The Shortest Way with the Dissenters

The Pamphlet was an explosive political satire, published anonymously in 1702. It was about occasional conformity, and was very
hard on the Church of England. Occasional conformity: we must remind that, at the time, a legal prerequisite for holding public
office (eg be a member of Parliament) was to accept the doctrine of the Church of England (whose head was the Monarch).
People had to accept the rules to hold public offices and once a year the dissenters could conform to these rules following the
“occasional conformity”. Once a year they could attend an Anglican service and then they could hold public service. Defoe called
them hypocrites. He would have liked them to oppose the government oppression that made it difficult for Christian to worship
as they chose.
It’s a political satire where monarchy, politics, religion are linked. It’s mainly against the subscription to the doctrinal articles of
the Church of England.
In 1702, King William III died, and Queen Anne succeeded to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. She was less
tolerant than William of the device known as "occasional conformity", whereby Dissenters could qualify as members of the
Church of England by attending a church service once a year. Defoe was supportive of religious freedom, though he was
critical of the device and considered it hypocrisy.
Defoe had previously irritated the dissenters by pointing out that those who took occasional communion were hypocrites. He
would have liked them to openly oppose the government oppression that made it difficuſt for Christians to worship as they
chose. But as the government contemplated taking even more severe steps against dissenters, Defoe leapt to their defence.
He chose to write a hoax in the guise of a High Church official, using the same vehement rhetoric often used in High Church
sermons and writings.
In his work Defoe assumed the character of an intolerant member of the Anglican Church and argued for the suppression of
dissent and dissenters at all cost, no matter how cruel the means. And he decided to do it using the rhetoric used in sermons.
The conclusion is the extermination of every dissenter.
The "shortest-way" in the title refers to the writer's wish to completely suppress Nonconformity by extermination .
Unfortunately, irony is not evident immediately and many of the readers took it literally especially those whose views were in
sympathy with it. Irony is not visible and only the violent argument can make the reader get the real meaning of what the author
is saying.
It was a difficult time for irony, especially if demanding more power to read between the lines than either dissenters or
extreme churchmen seemed to possess:

• The former were alarmed;

• the latter were enraged when they discovered that they had been hoaxed into accepting as the pure gospel of
conformity a tract written by a nonconformist for the purpose of reducing ecclesiastical intolerance to an absurdity.
Many read the pamphlet literally, especially those whose views were in sympathy with it, and it led many moderate men to
commiserate with the Dissenters. Others thought it satirical, however, and a controversy-broke out over the real meaning of
the work. It was said that the pamphlet had gone too far, that in its extremism it had crossed the line into Sedition.
Therefore, the aim of the pamphlet was to make people understand the idea of what was wrong in society and to warn the
readers. Forced to face the appalling logical result they understood it was a mockery and so the government tried to discover the
identity of the author. Defoe tried to hide at first but in 1702 he was discovered and was forced to stand in the pillory for three
days.
A pillory consisted of hinged wooden boards that formed holes through which a person's head, arms and legs were forced. The
boards were locked together to hold the captive tight, making it impossible to escape, but also to move. As the pillory was
usually set up in marketplaces or at crossroads, the victim attracted crowds throwing vegetables, dead animals and stones, and
could not defend himself with his hands.
His supporters stood in a solid ring around him for three days to defend him. It is said that the crowds began to throw
flowers.

Apparently, the narrator agrees with the Anglican Church and proposes the extermination of every dissenter. Using a
persuasive speech he tries to convince the public.
In his pamphlet, Defoe follows the classical rhetoric:
 
Inventio find something to say - citazione di fatti ed eventi (esperienza reale) with believable characters Dispositio draw a line for
the idea
- Esordio
- Narratio relazione dei fatti
- Confirmatio argomentazione
- Epilogue
Where the esordio and epilogue is referred to the reader and the narratio and confirmatio is referred to the persuasive
way of saying. We need to convince the reader of the same idea of the writer.

Elocutio say something using the rhetoric features. Very high register.

Conclusions

Sometimes, though, his irony is difficult to understand the reader must be advised the writer is being ironical -> Readers
are not used to detect religious satire at a glance. So, it produces socio-political and religious reflexion; it triggers
mechanism of comparison.
The usage of the literary devices does not affect the comprehension of the text (climax, deprecation, exclamation,
rethorical interrogation, paradox).

--It is a monitory satire, written to warn like-minded readers. English Dissenters opposed state interference in religious
matters. They were fiercely opposed to the hierarchical structure of the Established Church and the ties between it and the
government. Defoe was raised as a Dissenter and due to this he was not admitted to Oxford or Cambridge -> this lead to a
deep resentment towards the upper classes who had denied him entrance to the most prestigious schools (as well as a
craving for joining the upper classes: this was a contradiction present in the middle class in general).

Defoe wanted readers to believe that there was a high Churchman behind the Pamphlet, a Churchman so engaged in his
mission that he did not realise that this intolerance was oppressive and unjust. Therefore, the Pamphlet was apparently in
favour of the Anglican Church, dealing with the physical “extermination” of all dissenters. The Pamphlet: alarmed the
Dissenters (Defoe believed that “occasional communion” was hypocritical, he would have liked them to openly oppose the
government). o enraged the Churchmen (when they discovered that they had been hoaxed). –
Defoe did not mean to make simple satire, he wanted people to be conscious of what was going on, but not every pepole, just
people who had same mind he had (Dissenters). The Pamphlet remained anonymous, so he did not mean to say “I wrote the P.
against the Church”, he wanted pepole to believe that he was a high church man behind his pamphlet.

Robinson Crusoe (his major novel)

It is considered the first modern novel in English.
It is a fictional autobiography of the title character, because it deals with a castaway Robinson Crusoe, who is spending 28 years
on a remote tropical island, near Venezuela, after a shipwrecked where he met Native Americans, captives and mutineers before
being rescued.
Immediate, universal positive reception. It was published in April 1719 and before the end of the year it was published
in four editions.

By the end of the 19th century no book in the histroy of Western literature had spawned more editions, spin-offs and
translations than Robinson Crusoe > more than 700 alternative versions, including children's versions with mainly pictures
and no text. It has been also translated in many languages. At that time traveller books were very common, but this is
different because Robinson has to face with troubles.
Traditionally related to the real-life of Alexander Selkirk > a Scottish castaway who lived four years on a Pacific island. The
details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago.

An employee of the Duke of Monmouth, Pitman played a part in the Monmouth Rebellion. Pitman published a short book
about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony, followed by his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island
misadventures. Defoe may have met Pitman in person and learned of his experience first-hand.

The book is not divided into chapters but there are three main moments tant describes the 3 main moments in Robinson
Crusoe’s experience (and they are separeted in time and features):
1. 19 years old Robinson leaves his family to make fortune at sea. After many dangerous experience he lands in Brazil
where he becomes a successful planter. During an expedition to Africa to get some slaves for his plantation, he is
shipwrecked on a remote island.
2. Robinson’s life on the island where he meets savages and save a prisoner that will become his servant and to whom he
will teach English language.(Friday). On the island he survives through his own efforts. He spends here 28 years, 2
months and 19 days during which he keeps a journal recording what happens day after day
3. Robinson’s rescue and return to Europe where he discovers he has become rich thank’s to his plantation in
Brazil.

Themes
It is written as an autobiography in the first person singular to make it more believable. Only the main character is taken into
consideration and he is the one who faces several misfortunes. But the writer is not the character, they share an experience.
Defoe in his life tryed to make fortune and he overcame. The author is the writer that speaks about the character in first person
to make the events believable.
AUTHOR=WRITER NARRATOR=CHARACTER OF THE BOOK
This is not a real plot of consequent events, there are some episodes unrolling around the same protagonist.
He is self-made, self-reliant and represents the new hero. There is an attention on the individual struggling against all sorts of
misfortunes and the possibility for himself’s to be saved. This is the modern man that shares the Puritan idea of the self-made
businessman advancing economically through his own work. But the characters do not really develop, changes are in the
external conditions.
There is money the colonialism theme in the relationship between Robinson and Friday (conqueror and conquered) and the
rebuilding of the English mechanism on a desert island. Again, it asserts new values (money, social advancement and justice=
burgeois values; honour and glory= chivalric values; good manners, fashion = British gentleman’s value).
It reflects the new type of hero that has the chance to live what people dream about (common sense, prudence and adventure)
and stresses the importance of work and daily activities. He is on a desert island where he is forced to think about his daily
activities if he doesn’t want to loose his mind.
Every situation is described step by step. Sometimes it is repeated to increase the sense of danger and the involvement of the
reader. There are a lot of repetition, so that the same idea is repeated many times, the same words come back again and again.
Details and list of objects are useful to the reader to understand the situation.

There is no sentimentalism but a more practical attitude (pursuit of money) and a moral attitude because of the prayers and
gratitude to God. In fact he prays during his conversation. Man can save himself through his own faith and efforts. Money, as a
statul symbol, is the proof given by God to people as a personal profit.
Depiction of the English society: habits and ideas of contemporary society give Robinson the strength to go on they give the
sense of everyday life, for ex. Smoking and drinking were symbols of English society. He needs tools to rebuild the society he
wants to restablish. There is a veiled satire of English contemporary society but it’s not as strong as in the pamphlet.
Defoe develops a new idea of the novel trying to meet the taste of his publisher and the one of his reader on which he depends
for his living.
We get some information directly from the title of the book: content, name, where he comes from, the event that occurred, the
reason why he is on the island and the end. It’s like a resumè on the book.
The term "Robinsonade" has been coined to describe the genre of stories similar to Robinson Crusoe.

Defoe went on to write a lesser-known sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, that was inteded to be the last part
of his stories.

Style and feature:

Simple and concrete language and prose to reinforce the impression of reality conveyed by the first person narration.
Rambling syntax (miming a tale told by a person involved in the events described)
Genuine experience
Believable characters in realistic situations

The new middle-class hero

Robinson Crusoe belongs to the middle class, 'the middle state', which his father praises as 'the best state in the world, the most
suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of
mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition and envy of the upper part of mankind'. What Robinson has in
common with the classical heroes of travel literature is his restlessness, the search for his own identity in alternative to the
model provided by his father

A spiritual autobiography
The novel is full of religious references to God, sin, Providence and salvation. It can be read as a spiritual autobiography in
which the hero reads the Bible to find comfort and guidance, experiences the constant conflict between good and evil, and
keeps a diary to record events in order to see God's will in them. What Defoe explores is the conflict between economic
motivation and spiritual salvation.

The island
The setting of most of the story - the island - is the ideal place for Robinson to prove his qualities, to demonstrate that he
deserved to be saved by God's Providence. His God being the God of the puritans who wants His chosen people to do their best
to increase the gifts He has given them. Secondly, on the island Robinson organises a primitive empire, thus becoming the
prototype of the English coloniser: his stay on the island is not seen as a return to a natural state, but as a chance to exploit and
dominate nature.

The individual and society

The hero's life on the island puts forward the issue of the relationship between the individual and society, between the
'private' and the 'public' spheres. The society Robinson creates on the island is not an alternative to the English one; on the
contrary, it can be read as an exaltation of 18th-century England and its ideals of mobility, material productiveness and
individualism. Defoe shows that, though God is the prime cause of everything, the individual can shape his destiny through
action. Robinson has a pragmatic and individualistic outlook. He applies a rational method to every situation: he always starts
by observing the situation, then he makes a list of all possible solutions, he considers the pros and cons and he chooses the
best alternative.

What is irony?
Irony is when the reality is opposite of what we expect. The key here is "opposite," not just different. This incongruity can be
found in language (what we say vs. what we mean) or circumstances (what we expect to happen vs. what actually happens).
Verbal irony is when someone says something, but means the opposite. Within this verbal irony general definition, there are
4 types of verbal irony: Sarcasm, Understatement, Overstatement
Situational irony is when we expect one thing, but get the opposite.
Irony is born when “what seems to be” is different from “what is.” This contrast between expectation and reality is what
makes irony such a rich device to use in storytelling. Irony adds a layer of complexity and richness to the conflict.

Irony in Robinson Crusoe

It is ironic that the romanticized figure of Robinson Crusoe turns out to be a thoroughly boring figure; the man who lives
contentedly on an island cut off from the world is hardly a character of great intrigue. He’s a stubborn, unimaginative
misanthrope, lacking conversation and curiosity.
After going against his parents' wishes for him to pursue law, Crusoe sets sail for the first time in his life, only to be
shipwrecked. Instead of being deterred, he sets out to sea once again with twice the resolve only to be captured by pirates and
enslaved by Moors. Although he eventually escapes, any sensible reader would expect that Crusoe would stay as far away from
a ship as possible for the rest of his life.
Not only does Crusoe set sail again, but joins a slaving expedition after having been enslaved himself for years. This is an
incredible turn of dark irony, and Crusoe's willingness to participate in the slave trade even after being a "miserable slave"
contrasts sharply with his alleged Christian values.

Conclusion:
The text is intended to meet the reader’s expectations and show them some aspects of human behaviour.
The aim is to amuse but also meke people think and react: they have to believe that even under the most difficult conditions, a
man acting prudently using his common sensecan take some advantage of the situation and lead to a decent life.

Jonathan Swift 1667 – 1745

Anglo Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric.

Jonathan Swift's life

Although his family was English, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was born and educated in Dublin. (his father died seven months
before he was born). He left Ireland for England at the time of the Revolution in 1688. Unfortunately, because of the political
situation caused by the glorious revolution, he was forced to go to England where his mother found him a job in Farnham as a
secretary for Sir Mr. Temple, an English diplomat who was retiring from public service. Here he got to know the woman that
completely changed his life, Ester Johnson, a fatherless girl who he was a tutor and mentor for.
He started to work for Sir William Temple, a scholar and Whig statesman who encouraged him to write his first satirical works.
During his visits to London he wrote ones of his best satires “A Tale of Tub”, on Christianity, and “The Battle of the Books” (1704)
a satire responding to critics’ of Temple’s essays on classical writings, with which he gained a good reputation as a writer. He also
began some close friendship with Alexander Pope, John Gay and John Aburthnot and together with them he founded the
Martinus Scriblerus Club in 1713.
In 1694 Swift returned to Ireland and became an ordained Anglican priest. From 1708 to 1714 he was mainly in London, where
he made friends with other leading writers. He produced a great deal of writings for the Tory administration which found his
talent for argument useful. Unfortunately, when the Tories came back to power he was asked to take care of the Examiner, but
he was forced to leave England for Ireland, in virtual exile, when the Whig obtained the power again. In April 1713 he was made
Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, where he remained for the next thirty years. After a few years he bagan to write
pamphlets denouncing the injustices that Ireland suffered. Since them he was considered a national hero, though he continued
to regard Ireland as a place of exile.
In 1726 he published his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, known as Gulliver's Travels; it was
published anonymously that reflected his political experience of the past decades and it was translated in several languages.
In 1727 he returned to England and stayed with his old friend Alexander Pope but Esther was dying so he came back to Ireland.
During these years he also lost other friends sush as John Gay and John Arbuthnot, he showed serious signs of illness till his
death in 1745, one year after Alexander Pope.
In 1729 appeared one of the best examples of Swift’s satirical vein: A Modest Proposal, in which, with irony and bitterness, Swift
suggested that the poverty of the Irish people should be relieved by the sale of their children as food for the rich. Swift’s target
in writing his pamphlet was not only English rule in Ireland; his biting irony was directed against the Irish as well, who seemed to
him passive in their misfortune. Furthermore The Proposal mocked the figure of the projectorwho builds rational plans for the
benefit of humanity, a figure that was becoming popular in the 18th century.
Swift wrote poetry as well as prose, and his satires range over all topics. Critically, Swift's satire marked the development of
prose parody away from simple satire or burlesque. What Swift did was to combine parody, with its imitation of form and style
of another, and satire in prose. Swift's works would pretend to speak in the voice of an opponent and imitate the style of the
opponent and have the parodic work itself be the satire. Swift's first major satire was A Tale of a Tub (1703–1705), which
introduced an ancients/moderns division that would serve as a distinction between the old and new conception of value. The
"moderns" sought trade, empirical science, the individual's reason above the society's, while the "ancients" believed in inherent
and immanent value of birth, and the society over the individual's determinations of the good
Swift's later years were marked by the decay of his mental faculties, due to labyrinthine vertigo, and by deafness. He died in
1745.

He was a Protestant, ordained into the Irish Church. His writings are intimately related to the deeply split political and
religious issues of Britain and Ireland of his time.
Ireland was a country that had been controlled by England for nearly 500 years. The Stuarts had established a Protestant
governing aristocracy amid the country's relatively poor Catholic population. Denied union with England in 1707 (when
Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade restrictions. Much of Swift’s propagandistic writing
(pamphlets, essays, and satirical works) was dedicated to the cause of Irish independence from English interference.
In Swifts’ times both Great Britain and Ireland were deeply torn on religious matters. Roman Catholics, were excluded from
political life, but were in fact the majority of the population in Ireland and a substantial minority in Scotland. The religious divide
coincided with a political one: Catholicism was identified with political Jacobitism, that is with loyalty to James and the exiled
Stuart royal family.

A controversial writer
Swift was a great pamphleteer and an outstanding satirical writer who submitted contemporary society to sharp attack.
Swift is without doubt one of the most controversial among great English writers. He has been labelled as a misanthrope, a
monster or a lover of mankind. What clearly emerges from his works is that he was seriously concerned with politics and
society, and that his attitude was conservative. It is also clear that he did not share the optimism of his age or the pride in
England of his contemporaries. According to Swift, reason is an instrument that must be used properly. Swift found in irony and
satire the means that suited his temperament and his interests. He usually achieved the effect of parody, combining ironic
intent with the simplicity of his style and his diction.

A Modest Proposal

It is a satire. But what is a satire? It’s a piece of work whose intent is to create humor by deriding its topic, so it gives the reader a
more humorous look at human conditions and attitudes. Of course it’s different from comedy because comedy involved laughter
in itself.
By the time he wrote A Modest Proposal, Swift’s satirical methods, rooted in the classical techniques of Roman satirists such as
Juvenal, had been perfected. His prose style—muscular, compact, sinewy, and expressive—can lay claim to being the most exact
and forceful in the English language. His fertile imagination was able to lay down layer upon layer of irony in almost bewildering
succession. A Modest Proposal, like Gulliver’s Travels, transcends the political, social, and economic crises that gave birth to it,
woeful as they were. Packed with irony and satirical revelations of the human condition, this fantastical tract rises to timeless
literature.
 Quintilian was the first Roman to speak satirically and then we find Horace and Juvenal (early days of the Roman Empire). About
Horace we can say that he criticizes social vice in a sympathetic tone, with light-hearted humor and exaggeration. The victim of
Horace’s mockery was not the nobility but street philosophers or bad poets (the lower part of the human being).

About Juvenal, we can say that he spoke about common people who were interested in food and entertainment. He said that
men should pray for mens sana in corpore sano (sound mind in a sound body) rather than power and wealth. Juvenalian satire
distinghuishes itsekf for pessimism, abrasive style, it seems a brutal critique of the social deviance of Pagan Rome.

In his satirical works Swift was inspired by Juvenal, above all in “A modest Proposal”. The inspirational work was the Apology by
Tertullian which sees the same central scheme (cannibalism and the eating of babies), same command of sarcasm and language
in a very ironical sense
With the return of the Whig Swift came back to Ireland which was a Roman Catholic country and not a wealthy one. The landlord
were paid from the produce of the land at rates the workers couldn’t afford and starvation was very common. That’s why he
decided to turn his skills into support of the Irish cause writing in 1729 A Modest Proposal which ensure him the status of an Irish
patriot.

In this satirical essay, Jonathan Swift offers up one solution to Ireland's devastating food shortage: eating babies. The full title of
the essay, originally published as a pamphlet, is "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a
Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick."

 The narrator or "proposer" suggests that, of the 120,000 babies estimated to be born in Ireland per year, 100,000 should be sold
and eaten as a food staple. He argues that the plump flesh of the newborns will provide the tenderest meat and that their skin
will make fine leather.

 The proposer offers up a great many statistics about overpopulation, famine, and the cost of meat, arguing that the sale of infant
children will stimulate the economy and provide a much needed source of income to the lower class, who can't afford to feed
their children.

 The proposer admits that this might not be a popular idea and that he himself can't aid in this effort, because his children are
grown and his wife is long past childbearing age, but nevertheless feels that the benefits of his proposal outweigh the
downsides.

A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, is probably the most famous satirical essay in the English language. Swift began to turn
his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, learning him the status of an Irish patriot. In Swift's day a "modest" proposal
would be simple, easy to achieve and unlikely to meet with objections.
It was first published in Dublin as a short, anonymous pamphlet in 1729. The essay begins as a seemingly dispassionate
diagnosis of the extreme poverty in eighteenth century Ireland. With nary a shift in tone, the essayist discloses his remedy:
Render the children of the poor as food for the table. The children of Ireland should be sold and consumed, for sustenance of
the destitute, as delicacies for the wealthy, and for the general progress of society. It was a brutal pamphlet in which the
Proposer suggests that poor (Catholic) Irish families might ease their economic troubles fattening up their children and selling
them as food to the rich (Protestant) land owners, thus solving the twin problems of starving children and poverty altogether.
It is shocking and deeply satirical. The essayist proceeds to furnish ironically logical reasons in support of this shocking and
repulsive proposal.

The first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland and their poor conditions > the reader is
unprepared for the surprise of the solution proposed. Readers unacquainted with Swift's reputation as a satirical writer often do
not immediately realize that he was not seriously proposing cannibalism and infanticide. Readers unfamiliar with the satires of
Horace and Juvenal would not immediately recognize that the Proposal follows the rules and structure of Latin satires.After
enumerating the benefits of his proposal, the Proposer addresses possible objections (including the depopulation of Ireland) and
other solutions dismissing them as impractical.
• The voice of Swift and the voice of the Proposer > the author is not the "narrator": a reader of the pamphlet must learn to
distinguish between the satiric voice of Jonathan Swift and the projections of the Proposer.
It is crucial to note that Swift, while the author of the essay, is not its speaker. Rather the authorial voice, perhaps best called the
proposer, is an unnamed and unknown personage whose intellectual characteristics and prejudices can be gleaned from his
proposals. What is stated in a straightforward manner by the proposer is meant satirically by Swift. The distance maintained
between Swift and the proposer is necessary for the many layers of irony in the essay. (Gap between the narrator's meaning and
the writer's intentions in the text.) The proposer, like the narrators in Swift’s fiction, himself becomes a character in the intricate
interplay of realism and fable, irony and satire. A Modest Proposaltherefore combines Swift’s outrage at the cruelties and
stupidities of society with satirical rhetoric and his skill at creating fiction.

A narrator is the person who is professing the idea in the text; the real writer (Swift) is satirical. 1) the idea of the writer 2) the
proposal which is the narrator of the text. The author is not the narrator.

Swift’s main goal was not to show Irish poor conditions, but to write a satire with the proposal of a cure-all solution. The
strategy is making the reader sympathize with the Irish and not with the narrator because it only cares for people of his own
social class. He also degrades the Irish using the language reserved only for animals. Swift highlights the absurdity of the
proposal which enables us to get the irony of the text: contrast between the careful control against the almost unconceivable
perversion of his scheme and the ridiculousness of the proposal.. In order to get the full meaning of the pamphlet it is important
to understand the social and economical context which sees the start of a new industrial age in the 18 th century and the workers
with low wages.
Swift presents the poor state of Ireland:

- A person doesn’t produce in an economic or political way makes a country poorer

- The wealthy of a country depends on the poverty of the majority of its citizens paradox from a mercantilist point of view. If I
pay a very law pay, they will not be rich. The majority will be poor and the nation doesn’t grow.

- Irish citizens were workers treated like nanimals, they didn’t have the same rights as English men and they were a very great
problem.

The proposer begins the tract by bemoaning the state of the poor in Ireland. Mothers begging for alms, with a crowd of children
in their arms, are a common sight. The vast majority of the population is poor, with little useful employment. Poverty drives the
youths of Ireland into crime, slavery, or the armies of the deposed Stuart kings in Spain. The proposer has an advantageous
solution, to which he cannot imagine a single objection. Up to this point, the proposer has shown himself to be a reasonable if
somewhat pedantic thinker, armed with a host of statistics about demography and economics in Ireland. Certainly his critique
reflects no credit on the Whig government in London, which Swift, a High Church Tory in religion and politics, despised. The
English colonial rule of absentee landlords, vast plantations, and enforced settlements is discredited.
Following immediately upon these trenchant observations comes the solution: a young healthy child well-nursed is, at a year old, a
most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally
serve in a fricassee, or a ragout. To be exact, the modest proposal is that of the 120,000 infants computed to be born every year in
Ireland, 100,000 would be sold to the wealthy to be consumed at table, 20,000 children being reserved for breeding. The proposer
calculates that a plump infant of 30 pounds would provide food for many dinners and, preserved with pepper or salt, will last well
into winter. The price of each child is estimated to be about ten shillings (about one thousand modern U.S. dollars), providing
about eight shillings of profit to the parents. In addition, the skin of the child would make fine gloves for wealthy ladies and
summer boots for wealthy gentlemen. However, the proposer rejects the idea of converting adolescents to food, as their flesh is
likely to be tough and lean.

The proposer supports his suggestions with a mass of coldly delivered statistics, demographic data, and calculations, as if writing
one of the then-popular tracts on mercantilism or trade with the colonies. He pedantically weighs the pros and cons of his
proposal, as he would any political argument. He lists six weighty and obvious advantages. First, his proposal would reduce the
number of Catholics in Ireland, the traditional enemy of the Protestant settlers. Second, it would give farmers the means to pay
their absentee landlords, since their agricultural products and livestock had already been seized under the English tenancy system.
Third, it would increase the domestic revenue of Ireland, with no money being sent abroad.

Fourth, the parents—“breeders” as they are called in the tract—would not only receive a generous income, but would also be
relieved of the expense of raising their children. Fifth, this new variety of cuisine would produce fine recipes for culinary
gentlemen and their dining establishments. Finally, the possibility of selling one’s children would be an inducement to enter into
the vital institution of marriage, as parents would better care for their children (and husbands for their pregnant wives) given the
happy profits that could be expected from well-nourished infants.

Once he has listed these benefits, the proposer answers the one possible objection that he incredulously predicts one might raise to
his scheme. It is true, he says, that this proposal would greatly reduce the population of Ireland, but this very reduction of
population would be beneficial, as there is no hope of more humane measures being taken to alleviate Irish misery, such as taxing
absentee landlords, replacing profligacy with industry, or cultivating a spirit of mercy from landlords toward their tenants. Finally,
the proposer vouches for his own disinterest and lack of self-motivation in his proposal, as his own children are all grown and his
wife past child-bearing age. (Swift himself was a lifelong bachelor.)

Swift’s A Modest Proposal has been called the greatest work of irony ever written. A dispassionate social scientist surveys the
poverty in Ireland and structures his proposal in five parts after the classical rhetorical
pattern: exordium (introduction), narratio (narrative), confirmatio (confirmation), confutatio (refutation),
and peroratio (peroration).

The exordium evokes the familiar sight of female beggars followed by many children dressed in rags. The image suggests the
problem of poverty, overpopulation, and hunger that the narrator proposes to solve with his “fair, cheap, and easy method” of
fattening the poor babies for a year and then selling them as delicious delicacies for the tables of the rich.

In the narratio, the narrator coldly calculates the number of babies needed. Out of one and a half million people in Ireland, he
reckons only two hundred thousand couples are breeders. Subtracting thirty thousand whose parents can afford them, and fifty
thousand who die in the first year of life, and sparing twenty thousand for breeding purposes, he figures only one hundred
thousand babies will be sold for slaughter each year. Instead of being a burden on families or welfare agencies, these children will
contribute to the feeding and clothing of thousands of others, since their skins can also be tanned for leather.

The confirmatio explains the public benefits of the scheme. This meat is not seasonal and thus supplies the cyclical scarcity of
fresh meat. A poor mother can clear a profit of eight shillings per child. In a land torn by religious strife, the number of Catholics
would be greatly lessened. The new industry would push the gross national product higher. Parents would save not merely eight
shillings but the far greater cost of rearing the child for years. If poor people saw a profit from pregnancy, they would be more
inclined to marry and then to be more tender and caring with the family.

The narrator admits that the population would be lowered, but he thinks it should be. He scorns politicians for overlooking other
solutions, such as taxing émigrés and banning imports from England. By including these proposals in the confutatio, Swift
ironically endorses them. The narrator reminds readers that these are unwanted children who would likely rather be dead. He
closes his peroratio by professing that he lacks self-interest: “I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the
youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing.”

Of course, Swift was saying one thing and meaning another. He means to condemn the wickedness of equating human life with
monetary value. References to slavery and abortion widen the scope of this satire on the many ways in which people put a price on
life. This outrageous proposal is called “modest” because it rejects the extremes of voluntary abortion before birth and euthanasia
for the aged and diseased.

Swift bases his writing on the analysis of the real situation of Ireland. As Defoe, he sees the real problem of his land. He uses the
irony much better than Defoe. Indeed the intent of the writer is more evident: it is too extreme to be believable and puts sign of
the irony used in all the text revealing his real position, contributing to lead the public opinion.
He wants to underline that you cannot keep people poor just because they are Catholic because it means that your nation does
not grow. If you want Ireland to become part of England, it should have the same rights.

Defoe= dissenter. He presents a world in which freedom of religioni s reduced to the freedom to conform (advocates freedom of
conscience)
Swift= member of the high church but he knows that you cannot persecute people just because they are catholic. He wrote to
eat people to underline that these members were not equal as English people. They are compared as animals.
He creates a world of moral fiction in which parents do not have their most obvious responsability, which is to protect their
children form harm.
Swift’s use of irony is more evident than Defoe’s:
the signals of irony reveal the reader his real position and this is quite explicit. He is the Church man that Defoe is depictiong and
he openly oppeses a political and religious position.

But both Defoe and Swift satire to underline the problems.

Swift introduces the reform he is suggensting by denigrating them:

“Therefore let no man talk tome of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither
cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials
and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our
women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we
differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting
any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little
cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards
their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be
taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the
goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, 'till he hath at least some
glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.”
He is actually proposing smth whcih is not eating children. In the first part we are facing with Irish
conditions: no national identity and no national commerce. In the second part they were fishing, they
are not one people, they are fighting for himself. So he proposes to getting unified and realize that
they are a people.

Rethoric and language

We have the exordio and the epilogue that refer to the reader and in between we have the narration and the confirmation or
the argumentation of the subject.
Argumentative language
Allusions (to real things happening ai this time)
Metaphor (“England is quite eating up a land”)
Apparent denigration
Statistical analysis
Use of gripping details to show the poverty
Language (the subject is deningrating the language he uses)
Serious tone
Irony (satirizing the events he describes)

Difference between Defoe and Swift

Swift creates a world in which parents do not have their most obvious responsibility which is to protect their children from
harm. His use of irony is very visible: to extreme to be believed.
Defoe presents a world in which freedom of religion is reduced to the freedom to conform.

Historical Context in A Modest Proposal

By the time “A Modest Proposal” was published in 1729, Ireland had been under English rule for over 500 years. In the early
1600s, the English crown tasked a small Protestant aristocracy with governing a largely Catholic population. Extant poverty was
exacerbated by trade restrictions imposed by England. Ireland was a desperately poor and dangerously overpopulated country,
kept poor and weak by English rule. Swift was a member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class and therefore had allegiances to both
England and Ireland. In the 1720s, Swift became politically involved in Irish causes, specifically England’s exploitation of Ireland
and religious suppression. “A Modest Proposal” was written in response to worsening economic conditions in Ireland and Swift’s
perception of the passivity of the Irish people. Swift made multiple appeals and proposals to Irish Parliament to tax landlords,
fund Irish industry, and adopt modern agricultural techniques, but he was consistently ignored. His “Modest Proposal” was a
frustrated parody of these serious proposals to chastise the ineffectual Irish government, apathetic Irish people, and exploitative
English rule.
Swift's Ireland was a country that had been effectively controlled by England for nearly 500 years. The Stuarts had established a
Protestant governing aristocracy amid the country's relatively poor Catholic population. Denied union with England in 1707
(when Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade restrictions and found the authority of its own
Parliament in Dublin severely limited. Swift, though born a member of Ireland's colonial ruling class, came to be known as one of
the greatest of Irish patriots. He, however, considered himself more English than Irish, and his loyalty to Ireland was often
ambivalent in spite of his staunch support for certain Irish causes. The complicated nature of his own relationship with England
may have left him particularly sympathetic to the injustices and exploitation Ireland suffered at the hand of its more powerful
neighbor.
Particularly in the 1720s, Swift became vehemently engaged in Irish politics. He reacted to the debilitating effects of English
commercial and political injustices in a large body of pamphlets, essays, and satirical works, including the perennially
popular Gulliver's Travels.A Modest Proposal,published in 1729 in response to worsening conditions in Ireland, is perhaps the
severest and most scathing of all Swift's pamphlets. The tract did not shock or outrage contemporary readers as Swift must have
intended; its economics was taken as a great joke, its more incisive critiques ignored. Although Swift's disgust with the state of
the nation continued to increase, A Modest Proposal was the last of his essays about Ireland. Swift wrote mostly poetry in the
later years of his life, and he died in 1745.
What sort of persona does Swift create for the "author" of A Modest Proposal?
The "proposer" is notable for his vanity, his cold-heartedness, and the ruthlessness of his logic. He represents the hypocrisy and
superficiality of many would-be reformers, whose seeming benevolence masks such impediments as prejudice, intolerance,
sentimentalism, and hyper-abstraction. His reductive handling of suffering humans as statistical entities and economic
commodities is what makes him most unappealing, in spite of the calm and reasonable tone of his argumentation.
Analysis
In A Modest Proposal, Swift vents his mounting aggravation at the ineptitude of Ireland's politicians, the hypocrisy of the
wealthy, the tyranny of the English, and the squalor and degradation in which he sees so many Irish people living. While A
Modest Proposalbemoans the bleak situation of an Ireland almost totally subject to England's exploitation, it also expresses
Swift's utter disgust at the Irish people's seeming inability to mobilize on their own behalf. Without excusing any party, the essay
shows that not only the English but also the Irish themselves--and not only the Irish politicians but also the masses--are
responsible for the nation's lamentable state. His compassion for the misery of the Irish people is a severe one, and he includes a
critique of their incompetence in dealing with their own problems.
Political pamphleteering was a fashionable pastime in Swift's day, which saw vast numbers of tracts and essays advancing
political opinions and proposing remedies for Ireland's economic and social ills. Swift's tract parodies the style and method of
these, and the grim irony of his own solution reveals his personal despair at the failure of all this paper journalism to achieve any
actual progress. His piece protests the utter inefficacy of Irish political leadership, and it also attacks the orientation of so many
contemporary reformers toward economic utilitarianism. While Swift himself was an astute economic thinker, he often
expressed contempt for the application of supposedly scientific management ideas to humanitarian concerns.
The main rhetorical challenge of this bitingly ironic essay is capturing the attention of an audience whose indifference has been
well tested. Swift makes his point negatively, stringing together an appalling set of morally untenable positions in order to cast
blame and aspersions far and wide. The essay progresses through a series of surprises that first shocks the reader and then
causes her to think critically not only about policies, but also about motivations and values.

Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver's Travels was printed in London in 1726, though most of it was certainly written in the years 1720-25. We don’t
know when he started writing the book but in 1725 it was complete. It consists of four books, each dealing with the
various adventures of the ship's surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver, and illustrated by maps of the places he visited. It’s a Whig
satire.
The book gave way to a series of follows-ups parodies and compendia over the next few years, mostly printed anonymous.
In XX century some spin-offs have been published too.

But what did people expect to find in Swift’s work? For sure, they expected all the elements of everyday life or stories that they
would have liked to live also written in a simple prose. But why is it not so? Swfit thought about writing a satire about travel
books because they were very common at that time and then his aim was to mocker people who actually expect a book about
travels. Moreover, being an anti-whig satire, the author changes the perspective of the reader: he presents characters who
belong to real data but he let the reaction and the reflection change in the reader’s mind. The realism is the satire itself and we
find it in the impressions of real life and in every details concerning the government or religious matters. The title seems serious,
but the content is very ironical. The book gave way to a series of follows up parodies and compendia over the next few years.

The sources

Swift looked to the extensive literature of travel, both real and imaginary. The scientific projects described in Book 3, on the
other hand, display an acquaintance with the work of the Royal Society. Finally, there are recognisable elements of political
allegory through allusions to people and events in the England of Anne I and George I.

Throughout the 17th century the imaginary voyage had been used by French writers as a vehicle for their theories. The traveller
usually discovered some happy society where men lived a simple, uncorrupted life, following their natural instincts and the
innate light of reason. From these utopias, the European man was seen as the victim of civilisation. In addition, there are more
general themes of moral satire: man's concern with unimportant matters and greed (Book 1), his pride (Book 2), the
representation of pure reason (Book 4), the absurdities and evils of the various professions (Book 3).

Characteristics

Published after seven years from Robinson Crusoe it can be read as a rebuttal of Defoe’s optimistic account on human capability.
Swift mocks all travel literature features especially Defoe’s using believable characters in realistic situations: simple prose,
autobiography and first person singular, one main character struggling against all sorts of misfortune relies on himself to survive.
This idea derives from the Puritan idea of a self-made businessman advancing in life. He probably remember that R. C. was a self
made man that manage to do things and survive; whereas Gulliver can’t survive his human capability. He is put into relationship
with other parameters such as change of perspective.

The book has three themes:

• a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions.
• an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted.
• a restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" controversy.
Description > every situation is described by little details suggesting a reference to real life and characters.

Details > they are given to add an impression of real life to the book; distance, time, number of objects, everyday objects are
mentioned because they are useful to the author to guide the reader to fully understand his mockery. Swift mocks Defoe's style
and travel literature in general.

> The more carefully detailed is the description, the easier it becomes to understand the satire it implies.

Names > distortion, anagrams, invention > playing with words to say what you "cannot" say but also to stimulate the
reader.

Situational irony > change of PERSPECTVE on events and details.

Depiction of English contemporary society and the real situation of Ireland.

Swift's major writing tools are irony and satire. Swift satirizes kings, queens, politicians, military leaders, religion, and ideas
of the real world by implying or directly stating that they are like their counterparts in his fictional world.

• Focusing on the body/size of things

• Change of proportions
• Change of dimensions
• Change of perspective > different attitude towards things, people, events. Everytime the perspective changes, the man
has to learn from the reality he faces. For ex. He is forced to take one on his hand and to speak with him or he will see
himself as A Lilliputian on the other journey because they are enormous.

DISPROPOTION OF THE TEXT: when he is in Lilliput he has to learn from the Lilliputians how to use his intellect and his
body, whereas when he’ll be in Blefuscu he learns from the giantswhi are wise, generous, able to see reality as it is (the
king exposes the real problem of England).

The text is intended to surprise the reader and sometimes disgust them, showing them some aspects of human behaviour. Its
primary intent is not to amuse but to make people think and react.

The 4 parts follow a pattern:

The causes of Gulliver's misadventures worsen as time goes on; he is first shipwrecked, then abandoned, then attacked
by strangers, then attacked by his own crew.

Gulliver's attitude towards human beings hardens as the book progresses; he is genuinely surprised by the viciousness
and politicking of the Lilliputians but finds the behaviour of the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the behaviour of
people.

Each part is the reverse of the preceding part

• Gulliver is at turns big/small/sensible/ignorant,

• the countries are complex/simple/scientific/natural,
• forms of Government are worse/better/worse/better than England's.

Continual reversal in perspective

• Gulliver sees the tiny Lilliputians as being vicious and unscrupulous, and then the king of Brobdingnag sees Europe
in exactly the same light.
• Gulliver sees the Laputians as unreasonable, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master sees humanity as equally so.

No form of government is ideal

• Brobdingnagians enjoy public executions and have streets infested with beggars.
• Houyhnhnms (honest and upright, who cannot conceive lying) are happy to suppress the true Yahoo nature of
Gulliver and are equally unconcerned about his reaction to being expelled.

Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad : Gulliver finds a friend in each of his travels and, despite his
rejection and horror toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to England
at the novel's end.
Swift's major writing tools are irony and satire. Proper names, such as Blefuscu that is a substitucion for France, are usually
distorted, palying with words to say what you cannot say.
In Gulliver's Travels, autobiography, allegory, and philosophy mix together in the travels. Thematically, Gulliver's Travels is a
critique of human vanity, of pride.
Situational irony rather than verbal or dramatic irony: we would expect philosophers to be wise but on the flying island of
Laputa, they are woefully lacking in practical knowledge and even attempt to build a house from the roof down. Satire attacks
vices and imperfections: throughout the novel, Swift satirizes kings, queens, politicians, military leaders, scientists, and ideas of
the real world by implying or directly stating that they are like their counterparts in his fictional world.

- Book one, the journey to Liliput, begins with the world as it is (the satire is against Wighs, Tories and the king).
- Book two shows that the idealized nation of Brobdingnag with a philosopher king is no home for a contemporary Englishman
(the satire is against England)
- Book three (Royal society una vera e propria setta li inserisce come scienziati per prenderli in giro estremismo della scienza se
non è collegato al senso pratico)
- Book four depicts the land of the Houyhnhnms, a society of horses ruled by pure reason, where humanity itself is portrayed as
a group of "yahoos" covered in filth and dominated by base desires. It shows that, indeed, the very desire for reason may be
undesirable, and humans must struggle to be neither Yahoos nor Houyhnhnms (satira contro l umanità in generale), for book
three shows what happens when reason is unleashed without any consideration of morality or utility

Particularly after Swift's success, parodic satire had an attraction for authors throughout the 18th century. A variety of factors
created a rise in political writing and political satire, and Robert Walpole's success and domination of House of Commons was a
very effective proximal cause for polarized literature and thereby the rise of parodic satire.

Lilliputian= small and delicate

Brobdingnagian= Very large
Yahoo= ruffian

Characters
What we said about Defoe can be said also about Swift. Indeed, these books represent the middle and upper class people with
its experience and they describe stories that these people would like to live.
People expected to read about a travel book, but the book was aimed at mocking people. People expected a New prose fiction:
original, opposed to tradition stories, reporting recent events with a simple language in prose. But all the features are intended
to surprise the reader, for ex fiction is different from Crusoe’s adventures.
So we find references to real life and real data because the historical events can be easily recognised. Characters pertain to
common life and their actions can be related to real experience but the author just changes the perspective of the reader
towards them using the situational irony. For example a change in proportions or dimension of people implies different attitude
towards events and things. This continual reversal in perspective is shown when Gulliver sees the tiny Lilliputians as being vicious
and unscrupulous, and then the king of Brobdingnag sees Europe in exactly the same light or when Gulliver sees the Laputians as
unreasonable, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master sees humanity as equally so.
Everything is described in details, objects, time, distance because the more carefully is the description the easier it becomes to
understand the satire it implies. He puts the elements of a travel book and transforms then into satire. It is all described with a
sort of Realism that gives the impression of real life, guided by a first person speaking in a diary form.

The character of Gulliver

Gulliver is middle-aged, well-educated, sensible and a careful observer. He takes care of his family and runs his business
prudently. He has experience of the world and he fully supports the culture which has produced him. During the four voyages
he is the reader's contact, and by the end he is completely different from the person he was at the beginning. Gulliver differs
from the typical traveller because the people he meets during his voyages are in no sense children of nature. They all live in
highly organised societies and are governed by institutions. If in the end he is disgusted by everything at home, it is because
Europe is losing its civilisation and falling into a state of corruption, expressed in the novel by the constant opposition between
rationality and animality.

Gulliver always finds himself displaced - first in relation to little men and then to big ones, and finally and suddenly forced
into comparison not with men but with animals. Gulliver tells his experiences in the first person, in a prose style which is
matter-of-fact and free of literary colouring, and records observed details with the precision of a scientific instrument.

Gulliver is not Swift himself; he is an invented character, an object as much as an instrument of satire.

Swift's masterpiece can be read on different levels. It has been widely read as a tale for children because of Gulliver's amusing
and absurd adventures, especially in the first two Books. It can also be read as a political allegory of Swift's time, as a parody of
voyage literature or as a masterpiece of misanthropy and a reflection on the aberrations of human reason.
He progresses from a cheery optimist at the start of the first part to the self-concerned misanthrope of the book’s conclusion.
Language
Very simple. The book is written in the first person in a diary form. We find reported speech and direct speech miming a person
involved in the situation. So, the reader is forced to identify first with Gulliver, then with the Prime Minister.
At first, Gulliver’s naif appraisal of English ideal ways of electing their Government reflects Swift’s wish upon the subject. At the
end of the passage the king comments on Gulliver’s description express Swift’s point of view on the subject. The writer uses the
device of repeated and punctual questions to express his own ideas

Structure
The writer is not the main character: Swift uses more than one voice during the book.The characters change in the book, but the
writer keeps his own mind.

The story

In Book 1 A Voyage to Lilliput ( May 4 1699- April 13, 1702)

Gulliver sails from Bristol, and after six months, is shipwrecked somewhere in the South Pacific. He is cast upon the shore of
'Lilliput', whose inhabitants, the "Lilliputians', are only six inches tall. They made him prisoner but after showing his good
intentions Gulliver is released and become the favourite of the court. He reassured people about his good intensions, so he is
given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court even if he’s a giant. (Gulliver’s observation on the Court of L. is
a satire on the court of George I, King of England at the time of the writing of the Travels. That is a satire of the time that every
contemporary reader should know). After many amusing experiences, he manages to return to England. His observations on the
Court of Liliput are a satire on the court of George the I (king of England at that time). Gulliver helps the Lilliputian in subduing
their neighbours but after refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput he displeases the king. He is then charged with
treason and sentenced to be blinded, but he escapes to Blefuscu where he takes the possession of an abandoned boat and sails
out.
He will be rescued by a passing ship which takes him back home. As for Defoe we have a shipwrecked man that in the end has
been saved.

In Book 2 A Voyage to Brobdingang June 20, 1702 – June 3, 1706

Gulliver sails for India, but finds himself in "Brobdingnag' because is abandoned by his companions, a country Swift located
in Alaska. Here the natives are giants twelve times as tall as Gulliver. His size causes him many misadventures and he finally
becomes the King's pet, kept in a cage. She likes him, so she buys him keeping him as a favourite at court. He is a curiosity
for the population. Gulliver is too small to use their huge things so the Queen commissions a small house to be built for
Gulliver so that he can be carried around in it. He also discusses the state of Europe with the King, who is negatively
impressed with Gulliver’s accounts of Europe and of its inhabitants evil behaviour because they use weapons and guns.
One day Gulliver's cage is lifted up by a huge bird and dropped in the middle of the ocean. He is rescued by a ship and
returns to England.

In Book 3 A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan August 5 1706 April 16 1710
Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates who set him adrift on a small boat. He finds himself on the flying island of 'Laputa', whose
inhabitants are absent-minded astronomers, philosophers and scientists who carry out absurd experiments. He sees the ruin
brought by blind pursuit of science without practical results: it’s a satire on the royal society and its experiments. He also
encounters the struldbrugs, unfortynates whi are immortal but not forever young, they have all the infirmities of old age.
Gulliver is taken to Balnibarbi where a Dutch trader can take him to Japan. The island drops Gulliver on Japan and he manages
to go back to England.

In Book 4 A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms September 7, 1710 – July 2, 1715

In spite of his former ideas, he returns to sea. He is bored of his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find
new additions to his crew as the Captain of the ship. But they turn the rest of the crew against him and they leave him on the
first piece of land they come across and continue on as pirates.
Gulliver's last voyage leads him to the island inhabited by the 'Houyhnhnms', rational horses that rule over the 'Yahoos', a vile
species of animal resembling human beings. He comes to admire the Horses and their lifestyle, rejecting human as merely
Yahoos. When the horses banish him because he is human, he builds a canoe and leaves for England. Once back in civilisation,
he joins his wife and children but cannot stand their human smell. He is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos. He
therefore goes to live in the stable, among the animals that reminds him of the nobility of the Houyhnhnms.

Each Voyage takes a long time (to change himself)

A Letter From Captan Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson

This letter, prefaced to the book, is written from Gulliver to his cousin
Sympson. Gulliver is furious with Sympson’s edits of his book, protesting Sympson’s adjustments to his story, especially the
addition of a passage praising the English Queen Anne (though Gulliver says he respects the Queen, he insists he never would
have praised her to the Houyhnhnms). He complains, too, that Sympson has muddled the details of his sea travel. He calls the
book libelous. He has received a great deal of abuse for the book and everyone doubts the veracity of the account. Throughout
the letter, Gulliver refers to human beings as Yahoos and laments the perverse world in which degenerate Houyhnhnms are
enslaved by Yahoos. Though Gulliver acknowledges that he, too, is a Yahoo, he notes that he was elevated by his education
among the Houyhnhnms, though some of that refinement has begun to erode during his time spent back among “your
species…particularly those of my own family.”

This letter introduces the theme of perspective. Though Sympson has just expressed his edition of the text, Gulliver is furious
with his edits. By accusing Sympson of falsification and libel, this letter not only calls the truth of Sympson’s letter into question,
it also implies that the text to come (as edited by Sympson) is itself somehow untrue, while also therefore implying that at least
some part of the narrative is true—because why would Gulliver be angry about Sympson's "falsifications" if Gulliver's own story
wasn't true? At the same time, Gulliver’s crazy names for things and his insistent distancing of himself from human beings
(“your species”) suggest that he may not be fully sane as he writes the letter. Is his claim to truth undercut by a potentially
insane perspective?
He complained of Motte’s alteration to the original text: he had so much altered it that” I do hardly know mine own work”.
Motte was the publisher who the manuscript was secretly delivered to. He published it anonymously, altering the worst
offending passages such as the description of the cour in Lilliput.

The Publisher to the Reader

Richard Sympson introduces the book as papers left with him by his friend Lemuel Gulliver, whom Sympson thinks was
originally from Oxfordshire and had later lived in Redriff, though he’s currently retired in Nottinghamshire to escape the
crowds of visitors he’d gotten at Redriff.
Sympson vouches for “an air of truth” about the text and attests to Gulliver’s honesty, noting that his fellow townsmen would
often emphasize something’s truth by saying “it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.” Sympson explains he is publishing
an edited version for people’s entertainment. His edits have consisted of cutting out passages about sea travel and geographical
information, which he thinks would go above the head of the common reader, as they go above his.

Sympson’s prefatory letter is one of Swift’s many tactics to make the book seem like a “true” travel account rather than a piece
of fiction. The letter not only refers to Gulliver as a real person, it also vouches for his honesty (and, by extension, for the
truthfulness of the subsequent account). The letter also defends the book’s vagueness about geographical facts. The reader
would most likely assume there aren’t any facts because the travels are just fantasies. Yet this letter claims the facts do exist
and were only omitted to save the reader the boredom of reading them.

Alexander Pope 1688 – 1744

The Augustan and teh Hanoverian age were dominated by profound faith in religion and focused on the social aspect of life:
decency, correctness, propriety (puritan idea). Pope was a great representative poet of this time because he joined the Augustan
virtues such as order, reason, nature, good taste, morality, utility and common sense.
st
He was born in the 21 of May and during his life he was acknowledged as the greatest poet of his period for his use of satirical
verse and his translation of Homer.
He was born to Catholic parents, for this reason he could not attend a university, vote, or hold public office, so he was excluded
from the sort of patronage that was bestowed by statesmen on many writers during the reign of Anne. This disadvantage he
turned into a positive good, for the translation of classical writers such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Shakespeare and Dryden.
Pope's formal education ended at this time > From then on he mostly educated himself by reading the works of classical
writers: the satirists Horace and Juvenal, the epic poets Homer and Virgil, English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William
Shakespeare and John Dryden. He also studied many languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek
poets.
He suffered from numerous health problems (tubercolosis) which deformed his body, he never grew beyond 1.27 m tall, but he
was a concentrated genius.
He was already an accomplished poet in his teens; no English poet has ever been more precocious. Pope's first striking
success as a poet was An Essay on Criticism which brought him Joseph Addison's approval. (1711)
It is considered as his most ambitious work that brought him instant fame. It was written in heroic couple style, appeared as a
new genre of poetry and debated on the question of whether poetry should be natural or should follow the artificial rules
inherited from the past. The poem begins with comments on the classical author and concludes that the rules of the ancients
are identical with the rules of Nature and that they are necessary for the production of poetry and criticism. Pope also gives
importance to the mysterious and irrational qualities of poetry. We cannot forget that poetry is something imaginative and
creative. This is the one focal point of his work. We inherit the laws from the ancient but we have to discover that these are
the same rules of Nature. We have to apply the same law of Nature to poetry because it reflects something natural, it means
that the contradictions between ancient and moderni s still open. Poetry reflects natural law and also its mysterious and
irrational side. So no attack on the poets should be made. The Rape of the Lock proved the author a master not only of metrics
and of language but also of witty, urbane satire. In An Essay on Criticism, Pope had excelled all his predecessors in writing a
didactic poem after the example of Horace; in the Rape he had written the most brilliant mock epic in the language; but there
was another vein in Pope's youthful poetry, a tender concern with natural beauty and love. The Pastorals, his first publication,
and Windsor Forest abound in visual imagery and descriptive passages of ideally ordered nature; they remind us that Pope was
an amateur painter.

In 1712 he wrote The Rape of the Lock. It was just to make fun of a high society quarrel between Arabella and Lord Petre a suitor
of hers who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without her permission. When the Baron steals her hair and she tries to get
it back it flies into the air and becomes a star. Here Pope applies the law of epic style to the trivial subject of no importance.
In 1711 he made friends with John Gay, Jonathan Swift, both Tories, and later with the Whig Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
for whom he contributed to some extent to the Spectator and the Tatler. He also began to translate the Iliad and encouraged by
the success of the Iliad he started translating the Odyssey which appeared in 1726.
In 1714 Queen Anne died and there was a disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites. Though Pope was
Catholic he might be expected to have supported the Jacobites buti t was very difficult to understand if he supported a party or
not.
Pope drew closer to the opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole led by Mr. Bolingbroke who inspired him in writing An
essay on Man. He published the first part anonymously in such a cunning and successful way that he even won praise from his
fiercest critics and enemies. This essay is a philosophical poem in which he tried to justify the ways of God to Man. Man is not
the centre of everything. No matter how imperfect or complex the universe seems to be, it works according to natural law which
makes it perfect. To the human it appears to be evil because of the limited intellectual capacity of Man. Indeed Man has a
limited intelligence which doesn’t allow him to see the whole creation and how perfect the universe is. Man can understands
only tiny portion of it and that’s why he has to rely on hope which leads to faith.
In 1733 he wrote Imitation of Horace but after 1738 he didn’t write so much because of his health. He died in 1744.

An Essay on Criticism

Pope wrote “An Essay on Criticism” when he was 23; he was influenced by Quintillian, Aristotle, Horace’s Ars Poetica. Written in
heroic couplets, the tone is straight-forward and conversational. It is a discussion of what good critics should do; however, in
reading it one gleans much wisdom on the qualities poets should strive for in their own work.

1. In Part I of “An Essay on Criticism,” Pope notes the lack of “true taste” in critics. Pope advocates knowing one’s
own artistic limits: “Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet”. He stresses the order in nature and the
value of the work of the “Ancients” of
Greece, but also states that not all good work can be explained by rules.
2. In Part II, Pope lists the mistakes that critics make, as well as the defects in poems that some critics short-sightedly
praise. He advocates looking at a whole piece of work, instead of being swayed by some of its showier or faulty parts.
He advises against too much ornamentation in writing, and against fancy style that communicates little of merit. In his
description of versification, his lines enact the effects of clumsy writing.
3. In Part III, Pope discusses what critics should do, holding up the “Ancients” as models, including Aristotle who
was respected by the lawless poets.

Its Pope's most ambitious work. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and it took him about three years to finish
it. Written in the heroic couplet style .

At the time the poem was published, it was quite a new genre of poetry. A response to the "ancient vs modern" debate on the
question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical
past.

The poem begins with comments on the classical authors who dealt with the standard rules that govern poetry, and the
authority that he believed should be accredited to them. Pope concludes that the rules of the ancients are identical with the
rules of Nature, and fall in the category of poetry and painting > like religion and morality, they reflect natural law. The poem is
purposefully unclear and full of contradictions. Pope admits that rules are necessary for the production of poetry and criticism,
but he also gives importance to the mysterious and irrational qualities of poetry.

He points out that critics serve an important function in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to the practice of attacking
them.

The Rape of the Lock

It is a mock-heroic narrative poem based on an actual episode that provoked a quarrel between two important Catholic
families. It satirises a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It isbased on a trivial accident recounted by
Pope’s friend John Caryll: Arabella Fermor (Belinda) and her suitor, Lord Petre, were both from aristocratic families. At that time
Catholic in England suffered legal restrictions and penalties. Petre, desiring Arabella had cut off a lock of her hair without
permission creating a breach between the two families. It was a sort of love sign at that time to keep a lock of hair of the
beloved. The 2 names Arablla and Belinda contain the word beautiful (bel=belinda; bella=arabella). So would like to underline
her beauty with these 2 names and beauty means perfection, so she should not been stolen anything. When the Baron steals
her hair and she tries to get it back, it flies into the air and turns into a star. Pope, also a Catholic, was invited to write the poem
in an attempt to comically merge the two.

Style and Features

The poem has a epic structure similar to Homer and Virgil’s invocation works: with an invocation, a statement of the theme, a
dedication and a series of episodes that contain: the description of the social rites, the preparation of the heroes for the battle,
the description of the weapons, the descent into the underworld.
Pope mocks the traditions of classical epics: for example the abduction of Helen of Troy becomes the theft of a lock of hair,
Social rites include the Coffee Drinking ceremony. The preparation of the heroes for the battle becomes the Toilet. The battle is a
battle of cards.
Although the poem is intended to be humorous the loss of the hair touches Belinda deeply because the loss of beauty was a
serious matter at that time. Women were supposed to be decorative rather than rational. Belinda’s reputation is very important
for the future, she has to fight everyday to be attractive.
The verse abounds in parodies and echoes of the lliad, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost, thus constantly forcing the reader to
compare small things with great. The familiar devices of epic are observed, but the incidents or characters are beautifully
proportioned to the scale of mock epic. The Rape tells of war, but it is the drawing-room war between the sexes; it has its
heroes and heroines, but they are beaux and belles; it has its supernatural characters ('machinery"), but they are Sylphs
(borrowed, as Pope tells us in his dedicatory letter, from Rosicrucian lore)-creatures of the air, the souls of dead coquettes,
with tasks appropriate to their nature.
The rich imaginative vision in such passage as The Toilet shows more than a desire to deprecate.
Belinda’s vanity is seem to take the form of religious devotion: there are some words and expressions that underline this
religiousness like mystic order laid, heavenly Image, adores, inferior Priestess, sacred rites of Pride. The first part is a ceremony
where the Toilet is the altar.
There is an ironic transposition of cosmic power to cosmetic powder, excessive value Belinda attributes to her make-up. She
becomes a Goodess through the power of Cosmetic. A situational irony is enhanced by the change of PERSPECTIVE on events
and details: everything is transformed, like England is transformed in what she is. England likes to see mirrored itself, it is a
powerfull place, a female country because she can use its power to overpower the other countries. Beauty is not only what you
see, for ex the beauty of England has the power to transform in smth terrible= brutal beauty.
Pope is showing us a profane world in which a man worships the woman and the woman worships herself.
The satire attacks vices and imperfections of society: all upper class are involved and their lifestyle is criticized in putting it into
comparison with an epic world which cannot be produced anymore. He satirises in his work the attitudes of his time, his
frivolous manners and the seeking of pleasure of the aristocratic life-style. So he intends that people should do something to
make a better place.

Language
Epic style invocations, lamentations, exclamations and smiles. Parody is added to imitation.
Pope uses heroic couple mocking of epic poetry and artificial language to dignify everyday objects and actions. So we have an
artificial language to dignify everyday objects and actions.

The Dunciad

After Pope had edited the works of William Shakespeare to adapt them to 18th-century tastes, the scholar Lewis Theobald
attacked him in Shakespeare Restored (1726). Pope responded in 1728 with the first version of his Dunciad, in which Theobald
appears as Tibbald, favourite son of the Goddess of Dullness (Dulness), a suitable hero for what Pope considered the reign of
pedantry. First published anonymously in Dublin, but its authorship was not in doubt. The term comes from Duns Scotus,
whose followers were considered as enemies of Renaissance humanism. It stands for "stupid, ignorant people".

In this impressive poem Pope stigmatized his literary enemies as agents of all that he disliked and feared in the tendencies of his
time-the vulgarization of taste and the arts consequent on the rapid growth of the reading public and the development of
journalism, magazines, and other popular and cheap publications, which spread scandal, sensationalism, and political
partisanship-in short the new commercial spirit of the nation that was corrupting not only the arts but, as Pope saw it, the
national life itself.

An Essay on Man 1733-34

Philosophical poem, written in heroic couplets > Four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke. Pope intended to make it into a
larger work (a system of ethics in 'poetic form); however, he did not live to complete it.
It was an attempt to justify the ways of God to Man > Man is not himself the centre of all things. No matter how imperfect,
complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe appears to be, it rationally functions according to the natural laws. The natural
laws make the Universe as a whole a perfect work of God. To humans it appears to be evil and imperfect in many ways, due to
our limited mindset and limited intellectual capacity.
Humans must accept their position in the "Great Chain of Being" which is at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of
the world.
Poem of faith > life seems to be chaotic and confusing to man when he is in the center of it, but it is really divinely ordered. The
limited intelligence of man can only understand tiny portions of this order and can experience only partial truths > man must rely
on hope, which then leads into faith. Man must be aware of his existence in the Universe, It is man's duty to strive to be good
regardless of other situations.(Puritan idea of faith)
Many translations into European languages rapidly followed, especlally in Germany > the Essay was regarded as a serious
contribution to philosophy.
Imitations of Horace > written in the popular Augustan form of the "imitation" of a classical poet (a sort of updating with
contemporary references). Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II > the widespread corruption under
Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste.

CONCLUSION:
Pope mirrored in his works the attitudes of his time:
- The frivolous manner and seeking of pleasure of the aristocratic lifestyle (Rape of the Lock)
- The squalor of his literary contemporary (Dunciad)
- The philosophical problem of his age (Essay on Man)
He used the heroic couple in order to mockepic poetry, applying epic formulas and heroic style to trivial subjects.
He represented the values and the contradictions of his time, a man that used his mind to understand the world.

Journalism
The spread of cultural debate in the 18th century brought the need for new means of expression and for the circulation of ideas.
This phenomenon was strictly linked to the Enlightenment and the affirmation of rationalistic ideas. During the 17th century,
there had been an increase in the publication of journals and pamphlets; however it was in the 18th century that journalism
took on its specific features. England was the first country where journalism developed as a free profession, encouraging the
struggle for political and individual freedom. The first English periodical, 'A Current of General News', was published in London,
in 1622, by the printers Archer and Bourne.
The modern periodical took shape in the first half of the 18th century in England. Unlike the previous political journals, it
deliberately avoided controversial tones aimed at the moralisation of public opinion, especially because it addressed a
middle-class public. Among the pioneers of journalism was Daniel Defoe with his periodical 'The Review', its political line
mirrored that of the whigs. It also dealt with religion, trade, manners and morals. Its influence can be seen in Richard
Steele's 'The Tatler' (1709) and Joseph Addison's 'The Spectator' (1711), founded in collaboration with Steel. The spectator
was non-political, being neutral between the Whigs and the Tories, giving it larger circulation. It was issued daily and
achieved great popularity, exercising a great deal of influence over the reading public. It was concerned with manners and
morals but also literature and contemporary affairs. It provided a model of social and moral behaviour to the middle class.
The main innovative aspect of the Spectator is the club. There was Mr.Spectator, who stood for the authors themselves, who
belonged to an imaginary club and commented upon all the customs and morals of the society of the time. His fellow members
represented the different social classes and social spheres of the time commerce, the army, the country gentry, the town, the
church. Steele first sketched the characters composing it. The style, clear, simple and lively was meant for the middle classes,
which had recently gained social importance.
Steele originated Sir Roger de Coverley, later on elaborated by Addison> the country gentleman, a hearty and sociable person,
conservative in politics; endowed with Augustan common sense and taste > making town people feel respect for the country
gentry.
The spread of journalism began to worry politicians, who were afraid that the masses could somehow get access to power.
They therefore tried to impose new limitations, such as the obligation to use special paper with a stamp on it. This led to an
increase in price which caused many newspapers to lose some of their readers. Advertisements became a means of survival
for dailies, such as 'The Daily Courant' or 'The Daily Advertiser'.
'The Morning Post' introduced the use of bigger type to distinguish the titles of the most important articles, and in 1785 'The
Times' was founded.
Another significant trait of England's social life was the coffeehouse. They were associated with news and gossip and provided
entertainment, so their function was very similar to that of the theatre in the Elizabethan age. With the beginning of a post
system at the end of the 17th century, they took on a new role as circulation centres. They served as a box number for
advertisers in the newspapers, and as meeting places for the most important companies. In the Augustan age, fashionable and
artistic people began to attend the houses, which became gathering points where people exchanged opinions. It was mainly
through the coffeehouses that public opinion and journalism began to evolve. The coffeehouses were almost exclusively
attended by men, though women were slowly showing signs of emancipation.
Later on other periodical forms developed: Edward Cave invented the idea of the "magazine".
In 1695 we see the expiry of the Licensing Act and with it the censorship of the press. Also during the past 20 years there were
10 general elections which brought people to get interested more and more in politics with the consequent enormous growth of
political literature. The politicians saw in it a way of leading the public opinion and to gain support from the electorate. For
example Mr. Robert Harley supported and secured the writing of some of the major satirical authors of the time: Daniel Defoe’s
Review and Jonathan Swift’s The examiner.
After Defoe’s review the great innovation arrived with Richard Steele and Joseph Addison who published The Tatler (1709 –
1711) and The Spectator (1711 – 1712). These papers had a descriptive and informative intent especially about social and family
relations; their topics were politics, fashion, aesthetics and commerce which were referred to the interests of the middle class.
They also were allies of the Whig and spoke of the positive and honourable virtues bred by a healthy and expansionist
mercantile commerce.

Josef Addison
He was born in 1672 to a religious man.
In 1693 he dedicated a poem to John Dryden and in 1694 he published his first major work a book about the lives of English
poets and a translation of Virgil’s Georgics. Dryden got interested in him and obtained a pension for him to let him travel around
Europe and get a diplomatic employment studying and writing politics. (he lost the pension with William’s III death).
th
He was mainly a critic and he wrote a series of papers which deeply influenced the 18 century thought. In 1709 Steele began to
bring out the The Tatler and Addison became a contributor quite immediately. Later, in 1711 they started the Spectator which
lasted until 1714. In this period he wrote Cato, a tragedy, and many other works. He was mainly a journalist but also a writer. He
had a quarrel with Alexander Pope and then with Steele so that they decided to go separate ways.
Addison died in 1719.

Richard Steele
He was born in Dublin and was a writer and a politician.
Steele most important appointment in the part of Queen Anne’s reign was that of a gazetteer The London Gazette, the official
government journal. In April 1709 he launched the The Tatler which was a mix of entertainment and instructions in manners and
morals. He wrote under the pen name of Isacc Birckerstaff.

The Tatler
Addison contributed with 42 essays and collaborated in several others while Steele wrote 188. Steele was full of sentiment,
impulsive and some critics consider him inferior to Addison for this but he marked with spontaneity and invention each of his
essay. Anyway, Steele was very grateful to Addison and the collaboration was very effective and useful.
The journal was a response to the middle class need of more entertaining information: not only politics, but also fashion, gossip
from clubs which were enjoyed by women. Gradually it became more and more committed to denounce social problems such as
gambling, duelling and good manners. It also had a strong ethical bent, attachment to the simple values like friendship frankness
or benevolence, seriousness of approach tempered by the colloquial ease and lightness of style.
In January 1711 was discontinued, we don’t know why. We suppose because the power went to the Tories and so Steele lost his
power.

The Spectator
It was born to replace The Tatler. First number was published in March 1711. Addison contributed 274 essays while Steele 251.
Steele had the most original journalistic flair and he evolved many of the most celebrated ideas. Steele had an attractive and
casual style while Addison was more measured and polished because he had been taught in erudite writing. The Spectator was
issued daily in single sheet printed on both sides in double columns.
It was not very political, it was mainly neutral between Whigs and Tories. It exercised a great deal of influence over the reading
public. Steele and Addison wrote about manners, morals, literature and contemporary affairs. It provided a model of social
behaviour for the middle class.
It was written to be enjoyed by all sort of reasonably educated people but the most innovative element was the club
representing the most characteristic social spheres of the time: commerce, the army, the country gentry, the town, the church.
These characters were sketched by Steele at first but then Addison put his hand and the Spectator became an observer of the
society it had around and expressed comments and opinions in a simple and conversational style.
Addison and Steele established the periodical essay as a prestigious form. They raised awareness of the society and curiosity on
the way it was developing, they had several types of readers and left their mark with at least 300 imitators before the end of the
century.
Other periodical forms developed: magazines, reviews. The journalistic writers understood their importance. They skilfully
moved among different themes and types of prose, they were able to paint in a very detailed way their society most of the time
using irony. It was seen as an intellectual mission of the writer.

Henry Fielding 1707 – 1754

He was born on the 22nd of April in 1707 and he was an English novelist and a dramatist known for his rich humir and his
satirical style. He came from an aristocratic family and was educated at Eton College. After Eton College he moved to Germany
where he studied law and then he came back to London where he started his literary career. He was a Tory writing for the
theatre but soon he had to retire from it because of his satire that were impossible to represent on stage (they were not seen
in a good way) and he became a barrister. So, he also holds a place in the history of law enforcement, having used his authority
as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, which some have called London's first police force. Despite of this he never
stopped writing his political satires. In late 30’s and early 40’s he contributed a number of works to journals in his liberal and
anti-Jacobite views. In 1741 he wrote his first novel Shamela in contrast of Pamela by Samuel Richardson which was full of
sentimentality. Fielding wrote a parody of it that he published anonymously and he underlined his repulsion about the
hypocrisy and ambiguity of Pamela. This satire follows the model of Swift’s and is written in epistolary form.
His anonymous The Female Husband (1746) fictionalizes a case in which a female transvestite was tried for duping another
woman into marriage. It reflects his preoccupation with fraud, shamming and masks.

In 1742 he started writing Joseph Andrews, a book about the brother of Shamela. It was intended to be a parody again but then
it was developed into an accomplished novel and marked Fielding’s debut as a novelist. In this book he realised the new
possibility of the new prose, he applied a scientific approach and defined what he wanted to write and how. He stated it with an
introduction “a few words concerning this kind of Writing”. It is a satire in prose and not poetry intended for a larger group of
people.
In 1743 he wrote “The History and the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild The great” where he compares the Whig party in
Parliament with a gang of thieves being ran by Walpole whose constant desire to be a Great Man should culminate only in the
antithesis of greatness: being hanged which puts you in a higher position but just because you are dying. 1749 he wrote his
masterpiece Tom Jones. It tells the hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune and married the woman he loved and it
is a description of human characters. In 1748-49 he became London Chief Magistrate, he founded the first police force, he tried
to improve prison conditions and to abolish the public hanging even though they were kind of a monitor for people and also a
show. He died abroad in 1754 because of his health conditions.

Tom Jones
In literature he was the first major novelist to admit he was using artifice. It was not real. Also he took characters from all social
classes, he described no special people and everyone could enter into the book. Unfortunately his characters lacked of
psychological realism for they had no emotion. He strongly aim at revealing the universal order of things. About the reader we
can say it is directly involved in the meaning of the book by filling the gaps in the story even though he is guided by the words
and expressions used by the author. The reader has a proactive position towards the book but he has to follow the theme so he
is not entirely free.
His greatest work was Tom Jones (1749), a meticulously constructed comic novel with elements of the picaresque novel and the
Bildungsroman, telling the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune. The plot of Tom Jones is too
ingenious for simple summary; its basis is Tom's alienation from his foster father, Squire Allworthy, and his sweetheart, Sophia
Western, and his reconciliation with them after lively and dangerous adventures on the road and in London. The triumph is its
presentation of English life and character in the mid-18th century. Every social type is represented, and through them every
shade of moral behaviour. Fielding's varied style tempers the basic seriousness of the novel and his authorial comment before
each chapter adds a marked dimension to a conventionally straightforward narrative.
He made no effort to disguise literary devices and openly admitted that prose fiction is pure artifice, indeed there is no
psycological realism and the feelings of his charcters are not explored in depth. The reader must fill the gaps left by the
author with his imagination.

Prose main features:

➢ The features are visible in the episodes combined in a very well organised structure: No longer a simple sequence of
events > episodes are well organized in a organic unit.
➢ Setting: streets, highways, itineraries (no longer interiors): where you can actually meet real people.
➢ This allows the author to use different characters from the middle or the lower classes. > "they afford the greatest
diversity and the greatest pportunity for the truly comic"

➢ We don’t have any individual analysis but at the same time picture of his society.: not men but manners, not individual,
but a species".
➢ Realistic picture of XVIII c. life
➢ No Puritan punishment > sexual instinct is not immoral, but controlled and directed to the good.
➢ No exaggerated sentimentalism, witty irony: Virtue is better than vice. His own experience and laughing was better than
crying. Irony gives comic and make you think.
➢ Social denunciation carried out through the character personal experiences.
➢ New concept of fiction (not already novel but history)
➢ Faithful presentation of the life of the time; He shows strong feelings such as love and he deal with it without shame.
➢ Distant from "vulgar romances".
➢ Asserted over and over again in Tom Jones > prefaces to the various books containing the author's viewpoint.

Lawrence Sterne 1713 – 1768

He was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. His best known novels are:
 • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
• A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

Also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. He wrote political articles supporting the
administration of Sir Robert Walpole. Sterne died in London after years of fighting tuberculosis.

Having discovered his talent, at the age of 46, he turned over his parishes to a curate, and dedicated himself to writing for the
rest of his life. It was while living in the countryside, having failed in his attempts to supplement his income as a farmer and
struggling with tuberculosis, that Sterne began work on his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman. Due to his poor financial position, Sterne was forced to borrow money for the printing of his novel, suggesting that
Sterne was confident in the prospective commercial success of his work and that the local critical reception of the novel was
favorable enough to justify the loan. The publication of Tristram Shandy made Sterne famous in London and on the continent.
Despite being rejected at first and several problems with his family at home, he continued his comic novel but in the state of
“greatness heaviness of my heart”. Maybe this is why he softened his satirical prose (it s difficult to write a satire when you’re
deeply sad in your life). Luckily the book became famous in all Europe, also in France and influenced writers such as Diderot and
some German romanticists considering the book as innovative and superior. Paradoxically in England it was not very well
received.
He died in 1768.

Tristam Shandy
Published in 9 volumes.
The novel starts with the narration, by Tristram, of his own conception. It proceeds mostly by what Sterne calls "progressive
digressions" so that we do not reach Tristram's birth before the third volume. The novel is rich in characters and humor, and
the influences of Miguel de Cervantes are present throughout. The novel ends after 9 volumes, published over a decade, but
without anything that might be considered a traditional conclusion. Sterne inserts sermons, essays and legal documents into
the pages of his novel; and he explores the limits of typography and print design by including marbled pages and an entirely
black page within the narrative. Many of the innovations that Sterne introduced, adaptations in form that were an exploration
of what constitutes the novel, were highly influential to Modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
The most striking formal and technical characteristics of Tristram Shandy are its unconventional time scheme and its self-
declared digressive-progressive style. Sterne, through his fictional author-character Tristram, defiantly refuses to present events
in their proper chronological order. By fracturing the sequence of the stories he tells and interjecting them with chains of
associated ideas, memories, and anecdotes, Tristram allows thematic significance to emerge out of surprising juxtapositions
between seemingly unrelated events. The association of ideas is a major theme of the work. The fictional author's
consciousness is the filter through which everything in the book passes. Yet Sterne sometimes invites the reader to question the
opinions and assumptions that Tristram expresses, reminding us that Shandy is not a simple substitute for Sterne. One of the
effects of this technique is to draw the reader into an unusually active and participatory role.
Sterne continued to struggle with his illness, and departed England for France in an effort to find a climate that would alleviate
his suffering. Sterne was lucky to attach himself to a diplomatic party bound for Turin, as England and France were still
adversaries in the Seven Years' War. Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne's second novel, A Sentimental
Journey Through France and Italy.

Main features:

The book ends without anything that can be considered a traditional conclusion.
• First-person narrator, remembering significant people and episodes of his own life. (Sterne’s).
• An eccentric patchwork of anecdotes, digressions, reflections, parodies and dialogue. This is a new technique applied to
old elements coming from the Picaresque.
• Mock-heroic treatment of subjects (Tristam's birth).
• High and low characters.
• Biographical structure of the novel.
• Manipulation of narrative time and voice that is ruled by the individual consciousness and not by the sequence of
events.
• No chronological order of events but some memories of things mingled backwards and forward as an eccentric
patchwork of anecdotes, disgression, reflections, parodies and dialogue. The reason is that it is a person telling his own
life so it describes as a person perceives his events and it is mingled because mind has its own space and time apart
from the conventional ones established by the external factors.

• Emotional implicational of facts on the character affected his emotions. Every time we arrive to a certain emotion of the
character we are recollected and go backwards to another event. Everything is connected by the state of mind so the
structure is not linear but multiple. We also find sermons essays and legal documents.
Fielding and Sterne
They manage to draw a picture of their contemporary society, most times through the use of irony. In this way the reader
becomes an active part in the book. The reader develops his social consciousness and his social consciousness and he
understand that everything is fictional which is explicitly declared. He understand that what he is reading is not intended to be
real but is intended to represent the time, the place and the ideas which the reader must experience and complete in his own
fancy and imagination.

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784)

It is often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet,
playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. He was called dr. Johnson because he
obtained a doctorate and also to distinguish him from Ben Johnson. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a
committed Tory.
At school he excelled in Latin and was an excellent speaker. He was very easy in making friends.
After a lot of misfortunes, he ended in working at the book shop of his father where we suppose he gain all his literature
knowledge. After his mother death he was sent to College where he spent all the time reading. Unfortunately, he was forced to
leave the college because of his father’s financial problems. It took a long time for him to get a degree: 1755 the first in Arts at
Oxford University, in 1765 he was awarded a honorary doctorate by the Trinity College in Dublin and in 1775 he obtained the
one from Oxford University.
Once he established his school, he met David Garrick the man who took him to London where he found a job as a writer for the
Gentlemen’s Magazine. He a good variety of essays and very active as a writer both to gain money but also to have his ideas
circulated around the city.
In 1738 he published anonymously his major work London, a poem where he described the city as a place of corruption and
crime.
In 1746 he was contacted by some publishers who wanted him to write a dictionary of the English language because people at
that time were not satisfied with the dictionary they had. They felt the need of something authoritative. His dictionary offers
insights of the 18th century a faithful record of the language and is considered a work of literature. After nine years of work,
Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. The greatest innovation of his dictionary was it illustrated
the meaning of the work using the literary quotations by Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. It linked language and culture. For
this work he received a pension of 300 pounds from hiking George III. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has
been acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". This work brought Johnson popularity and success.
Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was the pre-eminent British dictionary.
He also write a serious of moral topics essays under the tile The Rambler which run every Tuesday and Saturday.
In 1756 he started writing his Proposal for printing, by Subscription, the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare arguing that the
previous editions were edited incorrectly and needed to be emended. It was published in 1765. The innovation here was about
the creation of a set of corresponding notes that allows the reader to identify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare’s more
complicated passages or ones that had been transmitted incorrectly.
His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare. He saw the split of the
American states and was very disappointed by the government because he was a supporter of the English superiority and the
American obedience. In 1777 he started writing The Lives of English poets under the suggestions of some friends of his and he
published it in 1781; they appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet’s work and he was critical as well as in his
biographical studies.
Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him. Boswell's Life,
along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the
posthumous
diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. After a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary
criticism, and he was claimed by some to be the only truly great critic of English literature.

• Johnson was deeply involved in his time society.

• He became a sort of living legend in spite of his awkward manners and sometimes outrageous speech:
• He did depend on his writing to live. (active man)
• He wrote directly for newspapers.
• He was actively participating to cultural circles,
• exchanging ideas with contemporary writers.
• Humour and paradox
• biting tongue
• Irony and satire
 • He uses his skills to depict the society he lives in and to deal with social and political issues through the literature he
produces.
• He contributes to create and lead the public opinion.
• His works influence the literary perception of his time, lasting up to today.

The Preface to Shakespeare

In 1756 he started writing his Proposal for printing, by Subscription, the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare arguing that the
previous editions were edited incorrectly and needed to be mended. It was finally published in eight volumes in 1765. The first
edition was quickly sold out and the second one was soon printed. Most penetrating analysis of Shakespeare up to that time.
Perhaps no other document exhibits the character of eighteenth century literary criticism better than what is commonly known
as Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare. Written after Johnson had spent nine years labouring to produce an edition of
Shakespeare’s plays, the Preface to Shakespeare is characterized by sweeping generalizations about the dramatist’s work and by
stunning pronouncements about its merits, judgments that elevated Shakespeare to the top spot among European writers of
any century.
Johnson defended freedom of imagination in drama: he was against the classical ideal of the Aristotelian unities. Real dramatic
truth is an "imaginative truth". He admired also Shakespeare's love and knowledge of nature and on the nature of humankind
and humanity. Johnson's revolutionary innovation was that he created a set of corresponding notes (arranged in double columns
at the bottom of the page ) to allow readers to identify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare's more complicated passages
or ones that may have been transcribed incorrectly over time. Within the notes there are occasional attacks upon rival editors of
Shakespeare's works and their editions. He enhances the role of spectators > theatre is conceived, produced and staged for
them.

Saggio:
In his position, Shakespeare is an observer of human nature in all the possibilites he can develop at that time. So, Shakespeare
was able to write in order of species, nota s invidual. He talks about peoplen, not about characters.
We cannot just quote one work of Sh., but one is an example of the whole work.
He underlined that Sh. Was able to write works that were both comedies and tragedies, but the most important thing is that he
has been able to write works that were bot tragical and comical at the same time. In wich different kind of characters were
portrayed. This because life is both tragical and comical at the same time. His works mingled the 2 elements because Sh. Has
united the power of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition.
Another point is that the spectatur who comes to see Sh. Plays is perfectly aware of the fake idea which theatre brings. He
knows that he cannot go from Sicily to Athen in one day and that he has to stay sitted on a chair. There are faboulous animals
but the spectator knows that they were simply the characters dressed as animals, co that they were only Theatre.
Then, he knew that, in order to survive, he has to write for a large amount of audience, including the vulgar people.

The position of the reader

Writers should represent a closer world to reality. The task of our present writers is very different; it requires, together with that
learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from
general converse and accurate observation of the living world. [...] They are engaged in portraits of which every one knows the
original, and can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. The reading public has changed > they need to read about
their reality and to see themselves represented. This is why bourgeois novel (Richardson) and anti-novel (Sterne) developed.
The significance of the Preface to Shakespeare, however, goes beyond its contributions to Shakespeare scholarship. First, it is the
most significant practical application of a critical principle that Johnson espoused consistently and that has become a staple of
the practice since: comparison. His systematic attempt to measure Shakespeare against others, both classical and contemporary,
became the model. Second, the Preface to Shakespeare exemplifies Johnson’s belief that good criticism can be produced only
after good scholarship has been practiced. The critic who wishes to judge an author’s originality or an author’s contributions to
the tradition must first practice sound literary reading and research in order to understand what has been borrowed and what
has been invented.

Letter to McPherson
On the 6th August 1773, Johnson set out to visit his friend Boswell in Scotland > "a journey to the western islands of Sotland".
Later on, in 1775, he wrote an account of the travel and he had his word in the dispute over the authenticity of James
Macpherson's Ossian poems.
Johnson claimed they could not have been translations of ancient Scottish literature on the grounds that "in those times nothing
had been written in the Earse (Gaelic language).
In the harsh controversy, Macpherson kept promising to produce the Gaelic originals, but never did. At one point he produced
some passages written in Gaelic, but it later turned out that these were passages he had clumsily translated from English into
Gaelic. Macpherson sent Johnson a threatening letter. Johnson, believing Macpherson might physically attack him, subsequently
slept with an oak staff by his side to protect himself. In any case, Johnson did not lose his bitter style and answered promptly to
McPherson.
At Macpherson's death (1796) scholars got a chance to examine his sources: while there were some legitimate manuscript
sources, Macpherson had greatly expanded and altered them. The poems were principally written by Macpherson himself, not
by a third-century Scottish bard.
Johnson was absolutely right. Ironically, Macpherson was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to Dr. Johnson.
Social consciousness
What does being "British Citizens" mean?

Assert one's own identity, maintaining a difference with many social and cultural "others": Many European Countries acquire a
sovereignty on other European and non-European Countries, because it was a time of war, conquerors and conquered people.
Each people needs to find out its own roots to define itself and re-define its own characteristics taking into account all those
who be come fellow-citizens in a political sense, but are not descendants of the same cultural tradition.
If we think about the British Empire, which was settled on the 19th century, we should underline that many people faced with a
new larger land whose power wasn not in their hands anymore.
In the Colonies, colonizers feel a deeper bound with their own motherland. So they feel closer to it and British conquerors will
felle British every part of the world. At an emotional level, to reduce the distance from what they feel is their legitimate
Homeland. At a socio-political level, to assert their prestige over the conquered populations.

The new-born generations in the colonies (more and more often born from parents belonging to different cultures) will feel
the growing urgeticy of where they culturally belong:
with the native people of the land they inhabit OR
with the colonizers from whim they descend.

So, being a British Citizen means:

• Developing a double conscience of one's own social role: on the one hand it is bound to the local "little Homeland"; on
the other hand, it fully depends on the "Great Homeland" system, which all little Homelands refer to and have to
depend on.
• The answer lies in the past > the current state of civilization and culture is based on past premises, so it’s very
important to know the past to understand the present. The presenti s not only the present buti t will become past
in the future tense. It’s very important to mix them because this is the past to which future generation turn.

• Present will become past > it is then necessary to settle it right, to allow the Nation to further progress.
Present needs to progress to become future.

A change in perspective:

VIII century: age of harsh satire > not mere moralism:

• Moralism will develop along the XIX century, very often due to a re-reading of XVIII century prose and theatre texts.
Many newspapers deal with costume > their intent is to uncover mechanisms and defects of the society of the time.

XIX century > Victorian Age > prosperity, political stability, achievements, scientific discoveries, promotion of arts and
progress.

• Age of ferment, marked by political, social, religious unrest > though marked with a general sense of optimism due to
progress and technology (even if many voices raised against the dangers of those elements).

-Further economic development: Industrial revolution and Colonial Empire

-Establishment of bourgeois mentality and ideals > progress linked to money and industrialization.

-The Victorians were proud of their welfare, of their good manners and of their moral values, but they tended to ignore the
social problems still afflicting the working classes > wide distance between rich and poor > Victorian compromise:

Prosperity and progress (invention of telephon, photography) Poverty and injustice (Disease, lack of hygiene)
Ethical conformism Corruption
Moralism Moralism
Private life Public behaviour

Respectability" and "Appearance" > Puritan idea of "Propriety":

• Sobriety in manners and speech. All which was connected with taboo subjects (i.e. sex) was driven out of
everyday language euphemisms.
• Conventional morality (e.g. The Queen) or replaced by models to adhere to both within the family and in public
society > strict code of behaviour
• Change in taste > common people are busy money-making, so they have no time for developing good taste >
bad taste in furnishing and buildings
 • Pretentious houses on the outside, crowds of ornaments, decorations and pieces of furniture inside to hide
the false, the wrong things inside the house. (appearance)

Concern of more and more theorists > improve living conditions at all levels, promoting justice and balance among different
social classes.

Parliament responded positively to many of these "crusades": the accepted many acts regulating works, salaries,
exploitation of children at work and their condition in general, sanitation.

Philosophical ideas: Utilitarianism (only the usefull is good) , Darwin's theory on the evolution of the species (only the best
survive, so it was usefull to enlarge the population) , Marx's ideas on new social organization and wealth distribution, Comte's
Positivism(exclude religion and metaphisic) , Taine's theory on the influence of race, environment and moment on the
development of men, (idea of eredity)

Men of intellect in an evolving society:

• Men of letters / men of intellect put their own skills at disposal of the progress of People and humankind. Once established
they have superior capacities than the majority of men, their task becomes that of (in)forming society, revealing its faults,
criticising the mechanisms which do not work properly, pushing the common man towards elevating himself beyond the limits
he has set to himself.

The public they address to is the same bourgeoisie to which they belong, though they feel they are at a different intellectual
level > mission among their kind (they do not inform the worker class)

Many aspect of writing dealing with practical everyday life become professional as the authorship of the writer.
Many writers will focus their attention on social analysis > their intent being to foster the development of new
attitudes (Dickens). Some of them deny the characterist of progress, other supporti it.

New cultural ferments facing the changing conditions ofthe Country > importance of history and science

• Studying the past to understand the present

• Studying the different to understand the self

Material for Literary genres is based on the critical analysis of real life.

• Journalism
• Novels > social novels, romantic novels, denouncing novels
• Essays
• Historical writings
• Scientific writings

Some writers tend to put irony on the most problematic subjects, mostly on some characters, showing their bad attitude and
negative values in order to gain the sympathy of the reader to their own idea (novelists). So the reader feels involved and is
more susceptible of being influenced.

At the same time, attention shifts to the individual:

• Personal feelings
• Personal needs
• Personal rights

Romanticism

• Role of fancy and imagination

• Emotions and ideals
• Re-discovering of medieval examples

Literary production

Three main stages of literary development:

1. Early Victorian (1832-1860) > writers mostly identifying themselves with their own age.
2. Middle Victorian (1860-1880) > transition period, in which new trends tend to overcome the old ones.
3. Late Victorian (1880-1901) > sense of dissatisfaction and rebellion against too strict conventions.

Literary movements

• Romanticism (Late Romanticism) > expression of feeling and emotion, idealization of life and values, Middle Ages
as a source of inspiration.
 • Realism > art should reproduce reality faithfully, without idealizing it.
• Naturalism > realistic conception of art, plus total objectivity and scientific approach to literature.
• Aestheticism > "Art for Art's sake": the artist is no longer a moral spokesman and has nothing to do with the
issues of the time.
• Decadentism > art is superior to nature, supreme beauty lies on decay.

Conclusions

Literature voices the ferments and conflicts, the contradictions of the age.

• Compromise between new and old models.

• Irony and satire in disguise.

The research for a definition of British identity suffers the same contradictions of the social and literary development.

Development of many different movements/attitudes, sometimes following one another, sometimes developing at the
same time.

NOTES ON PREROMANTICISM

The age of transition – the early romanticism 1760-1798

- Historical background

George III came to the throne in 1760, during his reign the most important events that occurred were: the loss of the
American colonies, the French revolution, the industrial revolution which transformed England from an agricultural into a
manufacturing country. The loss of the colonies was du
e in part to mistakes of the king and his government, the Americans were not represented in the English parliament and
several taxes were imposed by England, like the one on tea. So the colonies decided to boycotted the imported tea in
Boston (the Boston tea party 1773). War broke out in 1775, in 1776 the colonies declared their independence. With the
treaty of Versailles England acknowledged the independence of the USA. During the French revolution England firstly
remained neutral, then realized that it was necessary to oppose what might become a French hegemony in Europe. In the
economic field, English life was influenced by the invention of machines which transformed commercial production and
marked the beginning of the industrial era.

Social Background

New social, political and economic events contributed to the slow decline of classical values and the awakening of romantic
ideals. The three great events of the age go under the name of revolution, American and French revolution, industrial
revolution. The first industrial revolution has its roots in the slow but continuous improvements and innovations of previous
centuries, such as the earlier developments in agriculture techniques with the introduction of crop rotation, the availability of
capital, the development of trade and commerce, the growth of population, the improved conditions in transport and
communication, and finally the scientific progress in mechanization. Immigration to the new industrial districts led to an
overpopulation of these areas and a lack of the elementary principles of sanitation in factories and houses. Special institutions
were founded, charity schools and hospitals were opened. Women began to make more conspicuous contributions to the
social life of the country, some travelled (like Montagu), others began the struggle for female emancipation.

Literary production
th
In the second half of the 18 century there’s a new kind of literature whose features can be summarized in the world sublime
which was set against “classical harmony” balance and regularity in form. The most important constituents of preromanticism
are the Sturm und Drang phase of German literature; the primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Ossianism; the cult of
sensibility in the sentimental novel; the taste for the sublime and the picturesque in landscape; the sensationalism of the early
Gothic novels; the melancholy of English graveyard poetry; and the revival of interest in old ballads and romances. Typical of this
new period sensibility were the predilection for the night terror and fantasies or exotic tales. These developments seem to have
helped to give a new importance to subjective and spontaneous individual feeling.

The literary production of this time was obviously influenced by the social and political conditions of the age. Satire was
eventually replaced by sentimentalism, while realism and rationalism had to make space for symbolism and imagination. This
period is often divided into two sections: the twilight of classicism and the early romanticism. The second half of the 18 th century
was a complex period, the countryside became the setting for several successful plays, the theatre did not play a very important
role at this time, overshadow by increasing popularity of printed works such as novels and newspapers. The renewed interest in
country life led to a new approach to nature that was seen as something real and tangible. The countryside became also an ideal
setting for poets. New themes based on intimate feeling began to appear and poetry was increasingly pervaded by a melancholy
tone. This was an age dominated by sentimentalism.
Thomas Grey (1716-1771)

He is generally considered the second most important poet of the eighteenth century (following the dominant figure of
Alexander Pope) and the most disappointing. It was generally assumed by friends and readers that he was the most talented
poet of his generation, but the relatively small and even reluctantly published body of his works has left generations of scholars
puzzling over the reasons for his limited production and meditating on the general reclusiveness and timidity that characterized
his life. Samuel Johnson was the first of many critics to put forward the view that Gray spoke in two languages, one public and
the other private, and that the private language— that of his best-known and most-loved poem, "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" (published in 1751 as An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard)—was too seldom heard. Gray remains an important
poet in the context of generally disappointing poets in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this sense he is one of a
group, including William Collins, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton, William Cowper, Christopher Smart, and Joseph and
Thomas Warton, who largely failed to provide English poetry with any especially distinctive period identity and whose
achievements were shortly to be overshadowed by the emergence in the 1780s and 1790s of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the
quickly succeeding second generation of Romantic writers.
Literary historians usually identify Gray with a literary movement called sensibility. Where earlier neoclassical poets like Swift
and Pope emphasized the rational powers of human beings, poets of sensibility turned their attention to the individual's
capacity for sympathetic and empathetic emotional response. (Consider, for instance, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility,
where rational and emotional approaches to life are so well contrasted.) The ability of the individual to respond with intense
feeling to a scene or a subject is the primary interest of poems of sensibility. They want to evoke an emotional response from
the reader: whereas neoclassical poets try to teach their readers how to think, poets of sensibility try to teach their readers
how to feel. Again there is that need for moral instruction through literature, but the means of reaching the reader are
different.

The English countryside was one of the most popular subjects of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry for precisely
this reason: the nationalism that poets used it to evoke tends to transcend class, religious, and political divisions.
The England that we know today was not, of course, Gray’s or Pope's England. It was, for example, only one generation
removed from a century of bloody civil wars of succession and religion that saw the execution of one king and the deposition
of another. The educated English audience, therefore, could be expected to enjoy poetry that offered an escape from these
issues. In response to the ever-changing social world, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English poets increasingly defined
their work as “art” that transcends historical change. As a result, as the eighteenth century unfolds, English poetry comes to
sound increasingly personal: poets use "public private voices" that base their claims to authority on their capacity for
authentic emotional response.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (published 1751) is probably Grey’s most famous poem. As the title indicates, it is an
an elegy. Such a poem centers on the death of a person or persons and is, therefore, somber in tone. An elegy is lyrical rather
than narrative—that is, its primary purpose is to express feelings and insights about its subject rather than to tell a story.
Typically, an elegy expresses feelings of loss and sorrow while also praising the deceased and commenting on the meaning of
the deceased's time on earth.
Gray's poem reflects on the lives of humble and unheralded people buried in the cemetery of a church. Gray writes these
poems in first person, but unlike Pope, he does not speak to a specific listener. Instead, he writes dramatic monologues—in
other words, extended soliloquies, in poetry rather than in drama. The poems ask us to imagine that we, as readers, overhear
the speaker talking to himself and reflecting on the scene before him: they ask us to believe that we listen in on the speaker's
private thoughts. Gray is regarded by many as a "pre-Romantic" because his poetry signals a shift from the characteristics of the
Augustan age with its public focus, heroic couplets, and satire to the Romantic age with its focus on private thoughts, lyrical
poems with alternating rhyme schemes, and exploration of the self. In the 18th century, art was regarded as artifice, thus the
popularity of ornate, flowery language. The Romantics wanted art not to be so artificial. Gray's poems reveal the characteristics
of both literary periods. For example, in "Eton College," Gray describes the young boys swimming in the Thames river with the
line: "And cleave with pliant arm, Thy glassy wave," a style very much in keeping with the 18th century. Gray uses this poetic
diction to establish his credibility because the language sets a certain decorum and appropriateness which his audience and
critics would expect. Yet, these elite gestures are contradicted by a respect for the poor. He can fashion a poem that focuses
uncharacteristically for his age on the poor and on the internal thoughts of the poet. It has been said that the Romantics
discovered the poor; Gray comes pretty close.
He further separates himself from Neoclassical poetry with his metrical innovation—he abandons the heroic couplet for
metrically irregular and inventive stanza forms.
One of the most profound assumptions that Gray contributes to the study of literature is the notion that poets are not simply
those who produce poems. For Gray, it involved having a certain sensitivity, whether the poet ever wrote or not. In other words,
a poet was simply a certain kind of person. It has been said that for the 18th century, "heard melodies" are sweet; whereas for
the Romantics, it is the "unheard melodies" that are best. Gray is best understood as a transitional figure between the two
periods.
James MacPherson 1736 - 1796
James Macpherson was born in Ruthven, near Inverness, in Scotland, in 1736. As a student, Macpherson was a prolific poet and
also developed an intense interest in the literature and culture of Ancient Scotland. During the course of his travels in the
Scottish Highlands, Macpherson claimed to have discovered fragments of an ancient epic poem, written in Gaelic, by "Ossian, the
Son of Fingal." With the growing interest in primitivism and the rise of Scottish nationalism, his find was greeted with
enthusiasm. Shortly thereafter, Macpherson announced that he had discovered the entire manuscript of this previously-
unknown epic which was based on the life of Fingal, a thirdcentury Scottish king (related to the Irish mythological character
Fionn mac Cumhaill / Finn McCool) written by Ossian (based on Fionn's son Oisìn), and in December he published Fingal, an
Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the
Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume. Temora followed in
1763, and a collected edition, The Works of Ossian in 1765. The name Fingal or Fionnghall means "white stranger",and it is
suggested that the name was rendered as Fingal through a derivation of the name which in old Gaelic would appear as Finn. This
work soon created a sensation in Scotland, England and Europe. Those familiar with the later, more authentic, versions in English
of ancient Gaelic literature will recognise many of the names and stories - Fingal is evidently Fionn Mac Cumhaill; Temora is Tara
(Temro in Old Irish); Cuthulinn is Cú Chulainn (though a much feebler figure than the Irish hero), Dar-Thula is Deirdre of the
Sorrows; Ros-cranna is Gráinne and Dermid is Diarmuid Ó Duibhne, though the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne is not one of
Macpherson's stories. And so on. However, much of the work is Macpherson's own invention -- the tragic love story of Fingal and
Agandecca, for example; and though "Temora" has some similarity to the Battles of Ventry and of Gabhra, the details are
different. The footnotes (by Macpherson) are almost entirely misleading or downright wrong.

The "Ossian Controversy"

Although Macpherson experienced astonishing success with Ossian and the Fingal epic, there were those who doubted the
poem's authenticity from the outset, including such prominent figures as Horace Walpole and David Hume. When it was first
published Macpherson said that it was a translation of an ancient manuscript in Scottish Gaelic which had come into his
possession, and which was a copy of an original work written by Ossian. The authenticity of these so-called translations from the
works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged by Irish historians, especially Charles O’Conor, who noted technical
errors in chronology and in the forming of Gaelic names, and commented on the implausibility of many of Macpherson's claims,
none of which Macpherson was able to refute. Macpherson's critics were particularly incensed that he had not made the original
manuscripts available for scholars to examine. Suspicions were raised further when a mere year later Macpherson announced
the discovery of yet another manuscript by Ossian which he translated and quickly had published as Temora; an Ancient Epic
Poem, in Eight Books: together with Several Other Poems (1763). In an effort to head off the sort of criticism he received
following the publication of the initial Ossian poem, Macpherson provided a detailed account of his discovery of the new epic
and even included specimens of the original manuscripts. Still, sceptics raised a number of concerns. They found important
discrepancies between the traditional narratives of Scottish legends and Ossian's account; other historical inaccuracies were also
present. In addition, the language of the manuscript specimen Macpherson supplied contained modern usages which could not
have existed during the period Ossian would have lived.
Macpherson's most formidable critic was Samuel Johnson. Johnson denounced the Ossian poems as forgeries and campaigned
vigorously against Macpherson. He went so far as to include several derogatory references to Ossian in A Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland(1775). Dr. Samuel Johnson who asserted (1775) that Macpherson had found fragments of poems and stories,
and then woven them into a romance of his own composition. Further challenges and defences were made well into the
nineteenth century, but the issue was moot by then. But at the same time Johnson and others were denouncing the Ossian
poems, supporters came to Macpherson's defense and sought to prove the authenticity of the ancient poet and of Macpherson's
discoveries. The controversy lingered on for many years and is documented in a variety of publications. Both sides became
passionate and vituperative in expressing their own view, and the controversy rumbled on over the next fifty years. The alleged
manuscript never appeared, but later researches have shown that the work is based partly on genuine Highland traditions.
Macpherson, wisely, remained in the background during these arguments and managed to sustain a successful career as the
author of less controversial works. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published translations
that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Fingal was speedily
translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been
credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German and
French literature. The work with this international popularity, translated into all the literary languages of Europe, was influential
both in the development of the Romantic movement and the Gaelic revival. Eventually it became clear that the poems were not
direct translations from the Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience.

The romantic period 1785-1830

The Romantic period is short, relative to other literary periods, but is still quite complex.
The beginning and ending dates of the Romantic period are identified differently by various scholars, though these dates
always coincide with major literary, cultural, political, or social events. While study of the Romantic Period for many years
focused on “the big six”— Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats—scholars have more recently expanded
their focus to include many diverse authors and genres of writing from the period.
The Romantic period had a great many more participants than the six principal male poets and was shaped by a multitude of
political, social, and economic changes.

Revolution and reaction

Following a widespread practice of historians of English literature, we use "Romantic period" to refer to the span between the
year 1785, the midpoint of the decade in which Samuel Johnson died and Blake, Burns, and Smith published their first poems,
and 1830, by which time the major writers of the preceding century were either dead or no longer productive. This was a
turbulent period, during which England was transforming from a primarily agricultural society, where wealth and power had
been concentrated in the landholding aristocracy, to a modern industrial nation, focused on manufacture, trade and industry.
The period from the Declaration of American Independence to 1830 was also marked by great revolutions: the Industrial
Revolution reshaped the social and political background of Britain (The Revolution implied new technologies and inventions, new
sources of power, the development of the factory system and transport), the Agrarian revolution whicg was connected to the
first one beacuse they both use technological inventions, the British colonies on the other side of the Atlantic became a new and
free nation; the French revolution brought its ideas of freedom and equality all over Europe. This affected also the cultural and
literary aspects of life. This change occurred in a context of revolution (American and French) and of war, of economic cycles of
inflation and depression, and of the constant threat to the social structure from imported revolutionary ideologies to which the
ruling classes responded by the repression of traditional liberties.
The early period of the French Revolution, marked by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the storming of the Bastille,
evoked enthusiastic support from English liberals and radicals alike. While many English people initially supported
revolutionary efforts like those in France, just as many came to abhor the violent tyrannies that followed. The Reign of Terror
that followed the French Revolution is a primary example. Early efforts to abolish slavery met with little success. Often, those
in power saw the granting of widespread freedoms as the prelude to violent uprising.
England at this time was often described in terms of “Two Nations”: (1) the rich and privileged who owned the nation’s
burgeoning means of industrial production, and (2) the poor and powerless who were more and more forced from agricultural
roots to life in industrial cities. Of course, it is this latter group upon which the Industrial Revolution depended, though it is the
former group who benefitted.
The word “shopping” entered English vocabulary at this time, reflecting society’s newfound love for buying the goods that
imperial colonization and industry could produce.
Women authors, though they did not enjoy anything like social equality with their male counterparts, did at least enjoy
greater prominence and wider readership than had previously been the case. The term “bluestocking” was often used to
describe a certain class of educated women writers and intellectuals.

"The spirit of the age"

In the last thirty years of the eighteenth century a new sensibility became dominant, that has come to be known as
“Romanticism” and presented itself as a reaction against the faith in reason that had characterized the preavious age, claiming
for the supremacy of feelings and emotions such as introspection, nostalgia, emotionalism, individualism.
There was a growing interest in humble and everyday life and a great attention was paid to the country where there could still
be a relation with nature, oppesed to industrial town.
A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins (ancient castles and abbeys) was part of a revival of a past perceived as
contrasting with present reality.
The rediscovery of the art and popular traditions of the Middle Ages manifested itseld in the “Gothic vogue”, so the interest in
what was irregular, wild, supernatural and horrific.
There was also a revolution in the concept of Nature. It was no longer an abstract concept that man could could control thanks
to his faculty of reason; slowly it came to be felt as a real and living being to be described as it really was.
The willingness to explore less conscious aspects of feeling was accompanied by a serious concern about experience and
childhood. To a Romantic, a child was purer than ab adukt because he was unspoilt by civilisation, so his incorrupted
sensitiveness meant he was even closer to God.
Writers working in the period 1785—1830 did not think of themselves as "Romantic"; the word was not applied until half a
century later, by English historians. Contemporary reviewers treated them as independent individuals, or else grouped them
(often maliciously, but with some basis in fact) into a number of separate schools: the "Lake School" of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Robert Southey; the "Cockney School," a derogatory term for the Londoners Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and associated
writers, including Keats; and the "Satanic School" of Percy Shelley, Ryron, and their followers. Many writers, however, felt that
there was something distinctive about their time, a pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate, which some of them called
"the spirit of the age." They had the sense that (as Keats wrote) "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning," and that there was
evidence of the experimental boldness that marks a literary renaissance. In his "Defence of Poetry" Shelley explained this spirit
as an accompaniment of revolution, and others agreed. Writers in general maintained the idea that the new poetry of the school
of Wordsworth "had its origin in the French Revolution."
The deep familiarity that many late-eighteenth-century Englishmen and -women had with the prophetic writings of the Bible
contributed from the start to their readiness to attribute a tremendous significance to the political transformations set in motion
in 1789. Religious belief predisposed many to view these convulsions as something more than local historical events and to cast
them instead as harbingers of a new age in the history of all human beings. Seeing the hand of God in the events in France and
understanding those events as the fulfillment of prophecies of the coming millennium came easily to figures such as Barbauld,
Coleridge, Wollstonecraft, and, above all, Blake: all were affiliated with the traditions of radical Protestant Dissent, in which
accounts of the imminence of the Apocalypse and the coming of the Kingdom of God had long been central.
Some writers rethought apocalyptic transformation so that it depended on the individual consciousness. Concernig Wordsworth,
his sense of the emancipatory opportunities brought in by the new historical moment carried over to the year 1797, when,
working in tandem, he and Coleridge revolutionized the theory and practice of poetry. The product of their exuberant daily
discussions was the Lyrical Ballads of 1798.

Poetic theory and poetic practice

“The Romantics” did not actually identify themselves as such. It was later Victorian critics who first used the term to describe
the previous generation of writers. Among all literary genres during the Romantic period, poetry was considered the most
important.

New modes of production and distribution made the written word available to more people in more places than had previously
been the case in England. In fact, some authors even worried about the problem of “overproduction” of written works. Just as
there were many different, and sometimes conflicting, “schools” of poetry during the Romantic period, there were many
competing visions for what good poetry should be and what its aims should be.

The Concept of the Poet and the Poem

In keeping with the view that poetry expresses the poet's feelings, the lyric poem written in the first person, which for much of
literary history was regarded as a minor kind, became a major Romantic form and was often described as the most essentially
poetic of all the genres. And in most Romantic lyrics the "I" is no longer a conventionally typical lyric speaker. The experiences
and states of mind expressed by the lyric speaker often accord closely with the known facts of the poet's life and the personal
confessions in the poet's letters and journals. This reinvention of the lyric complicated established understandings of the gender
of authorship. Wordsworth in the Preface defines poetry as "the real language of men" and the Poet as a "man speaking to
men".

Romantic "Nature Poetry"

Wordsworth identified Lyrical Ballads as his effort to counteract the degradation in taste that had resulted from "the increasing
accumulation of men in cities": the revolution in style he proposed in the Preface was meant in part to undo the harmful effects
of urbanization. Because he and many fellow writers kept their distance from city life, and because natural scenes so often
provide the occasions for their writing, Romantic poetry for present-day readers has become almost synonymous with "nature
poetry." In the Essay that supplements his Preface, Wordsworth portrays himself as remedying the failings of predecessors who,
he argues, were unable truthfully to depict natural phenomena such as a moonlit sky: from Dryden to Pope, he asserts, there are
almost no images of external nature "from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had been steadily fixed upon his
object." But in the Essay Supplementary to the Preface, Wordsworth's complaint against eighteenth century poetic imagery
continues: take an image from an early-eighteenth century poem, and it will show no signs either, he says, that the Poet's
"feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination." For Wordsworth the ability to observe objects
accurately is a necessary but not sufficient condition for poetry, "as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to
be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects.” The longer Romantic "nature poems" are in fact usually meditative,
using the presented scene to suggest a personal crisis; the organizing principle of the poem involves that crisis's development
and resolution.
In addition, Romantic poems habitually endow the landscape with human life, passion, and expressiveness. Many poets respond
to the outer universe as a vital entity that participates in the feelings of the observer. James Thomson and other descriptive
poets of the eighteenth century had depicted the created universe as giving direct access to the deity. In "Tintern Abbey" and
other poems, Wordsworth not only exhibits toward the landscape attitudes and sentiments that human beings had earlier felt
for God; he also loves it in the way human beings love a father, a mother, or a beloved. Still, there was a competing sense, that
natural objects were meaningful primarily for the correspondences linking them to an inner or spiritual world. In their poems a
rose, a sunflower, a cloud, or a mountain is presented not as something to be observed and imaged but as an object imbued
with a significance beyond itself. "I always seek in what I see," Shelley said, "the likeness of something beyond the present and
tangible object." And by Blake, mere nature, as perceived by the physical eye, was spurned "as the dust upon my feet, no part of
me." Annotating a copy of Wordsworth's 1815 Poems, Blake deplored what he perceived as Wordsworth's commitment to
unspiritualized observation: "Natural objects always did, and now do, weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in men."
The Glorification of the Ordinary
Wordsworth stated that the aim of Lyrical Ballads was "to choose incidents and situations from common life" and to use a
"language really spoken by men": for Wordsworth's polemical purposes, it is in "humble and rustic life" that this language is
found. Wordsworth inverted the traditional hierarchy of poetic genres, subjects, and styles: it elevated humble life and the plain
style, which in earlier theory were appropriate only for the pastoral, the genre at the bottom of the traditional hierarchy, into
the principal subject and medium for poetry in general. And in his practice, Wordsworth went further and turned for the
subjects of serious poems not only to humble country folk but to the disgraced, outcast, and delinquent—'"convicts, female
vagrants, gypsies . . . idiot boys and mad mothers."
Yet Wordsworth's project was not simply to represent the world as it is but, as he announced in his Preface, to throw over
"situations from common life . . . a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in
an unusual aspect." No one can read his poems without noticing the reverence with which he invests words that for earlier
writers had been derogatory—words such as "common," "ordinary," "everyday," "humble."
Wordsworth's aim was to refresh our sense of wonder in the everyday, the trivial, and the lowly. In the eighteenth century
Samuel Johnson had said that "wonder is a pause of reason"—"the effect of novelty upon ignorance." But for many Romantics,
to arouse in the sophisticated mind that sense of wonder presumed to be felt by the ignorant and the innocent—to renew the
universe, Percy Shelley wrote, "after it has been blunted by reiteration"—was a major function of poetry.

The Supernatural, the Romance, and Psychological Extremes

In most of his poems, Coleridge, like Wordsworth, dealt with everyday things, and in "Frost at Midnight" he showed how well he
too could achieve the effect of wonder in the familiar. But Coleridge tells us in Biographia Literaria that, according to the division
of labor that organized their collaboration on Lyrical Ballads, his assignment was to achieve wonder by a frank violation of
natural laws and of the ordinary course of events: in his poems "the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least,
supernatural." And in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christahel, and "Kubla Khan," Coleridge opened up to modern poetry a
realm of mystery and magic. Stories of bewitchings, hauntings, and possession—-shaped by antiquated treatises on demonology,
folklore, and Gothic novels—supplied him with the means of impressing upon readers a sense of occult powers and unknown
modes of being.
Materials like these were often grouped together under the rubric "romance," a term that would some time after the fact give
the "Romantic" period its name. On the one hand romances were writings that turned, in their quest for settings conducive to
supernatural happenings, to "strange fits of passion" and strange adventures, to distant pasts, faraway places, or both— Keats's
"perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn" or the China of "Kubla Khan."
On the other hand romance also named a homegrown, native tradition of literature, made unfamiliar and alien by the passage of
time. For many authors, starting with Horace Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto (1764) began the tradition of Gothic fiction,
writing under the banner of romance meant reclaiming their national birthright: a literature of untrammeled imagination—
associated, above all, with Spenser and the Shakespeare of fairy magic and witchcraft— that had been forced underground by
the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and refinement.
The "addition of strangeness to beauty" that Walter Pater near the end of the nineteenth century would identify as a key
Romantic tendency is seen not only in this concern with the exotic and archaic landscapes of romance, but also in the Romantic
interest in the mysteries of mental life and determination to investigate psychological extremes. Wordsworth explored visionary
states of consciousness that are common among children but violate the categories of adult judgment. Coleridge had an interest
in dreams and nightmares and in the altered consciousness he experienced under their addiction to opium. In his odes as in the
quasi-medieval "ballad" "La Belle Dame sans Merci" Keats recorded strange mixtures of pleasure and pain with extraordinary
sensitivity, pondering the destructive aspects of sexuality and the erotic quality of the longing for death. And Byron made
repeated use of the fascination of the forbidden and the appeal of the terrifying yet seductive Satanic hero.
There were, of course, writers who resisted these poetic engagements with fantasized landscapes and strange passions.

Individualism and Alienation

Another feature of Byron's poetry that attracted notice and, in some quarters, censure was its insistence on his or his hero's self-
sufficiency. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth (as if anticipating and preemptively defying Hazlitt) had already
characterized his poetic experimentation as an exercise in artistic self-sufficiency. The Preface has been read as a document in
which Wordsworth, proving himself a self-made man, arranges for his disinheritance— arranges to cut himself off, he says, "from
a large portion of the phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common
inheritance of Poets." Human mind was described as creating the universe it perceived and so creating its own experience. Mind
is "not passive," Kant's admirer Coleridge wrote, but "made in God's image, and that too in the sublimest sense—the Image of
the Creator." And Wordsworth declared in The Prelude that the individual mind "Doth, like an Agent of the one great Mind, /
Create, creator and receiver both."
The Romantic period, the epoch of free enterprise, imperial expansion, and boundless revolutionary hope, was also an epoch of
individualism in which philosophers and poets alike put an extraordinarily high estimate on human potentialities and powers.
In representing this expanded scope for individual initiative, much poetry of the period redefined heroism and made a ceaseless
striving for the unattainable its crucial element. Viewed by moralists of previous ages as sin or lamentable error, longings that
can never be satisfied—in Percy Shelley's phrase, "the desire of the moth for a star"—came to be revalued as the glory of human
nature. "Less than everything," Blake announced, "cannot satisfy man." Discussions of the nature of art developed similarly.
In this context many writers' choice to portray poetry as a product of solitude and poets as loners might be understood as a
means of reinforcing the individuality of their vision. And the pervasiveness of nature poetry in the period can be attributed to a
determination to idealize the natural scene as a site where the individual could find freedom from social laws, an idealization
that was easier to sustain when nature was, as often in the era, represented not as cultivated fields but as uninhabitable wild
wastes, unploughed uplands, caves, and chasms. Rural community, threatened by the enclosures that were breaking up village
life, was a tenuous presence in poetry as well.
Wordsworth's imagination is typically released, for instance, by the sudden apparition of a single figure, stark and solitary against
a natural background; the words "solitary," "by one self," "alone" sound through his poems. In the poetry of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Byron (before Don Juan launched Byron's own satire on Byronism), the desolate landscapes are often the haunts of
disillusioned visionaries and accursed outlaws.
Writing in the marketplace and in courts
The number of people who could read, and who wanted to read, grew dramatically during the Romantic period, particularly
among those of the lower and middle classes. Writers became increasingly aware of their position within a growing
marketplace, even though the Romantic ideal of the writer was often conceived as the solitary figure, removed from the
realities of everyday life.
New modes of production increased the number of books that could be printed. In this way, writing was affected by the
Industrial Revolution in England just as agriculture and manufacturing were. At the same time reading matter became more
plentiful and cheaper, thanks to innovations in retailing and thanks to technological developments. By the end of the period,
printing presses were driven by steam engines, and the manufacture of paper had been mechanized.
However, the British state had lacked legal provisions for the prepublication censorship of books since 1695, which was when
the last Licensing Act had lapsed. Throughout the Romantic period therefore the Crown tried out other methods for policing
reading and criminalizing certain practices of authoring and publishing.
The British state tried to control what could be printed and read not so much by direct censorship but by charging authors or
publishers with sedition or blasphemy. The state also tried to control publication by imposing prohibitive taxes on printed
matter in some cases.

Other literary forms – Prose

Although the Romantic period centered primarily on poetry, many other literary forms flourished as well, including political
pamphlets, reviews, drama, and novels.
The Romantic Period saw the emergence of the professional literary critic who came to have considerable influence in shaping
national literary tastes. Drama during the Romantic period tended to focus on visual spectacle rather than literary value.
Theatergoers went to see something (which might include dancers, pantomime, and musicians), rather than hear great
literature spoken to them.
The novel as a genre grew in importance throughout the Romantic period and it, like poetry, saw increasing efforts on the
part of authors to experiment with form, style, and content.

Other Literary forms - Drama

Whether the plays composed during the Romantic period can qualify as literature has been, by contrast, more of a puzzle.
England throughout this period had a vibrant theatrical culture. Theater criticism emerged as a new prose genre. But there were
many restrictions limiting what could be staged in England and many calls for reform. As places where crowds gathered, theaters
were always closely watched by suspicious government officials.
The English had habitually extolled their theater as a site of social mixing but during this era disorder seemed the rule: riots
broke out at Covent Garden in 1792 and 1809. The link between drama and disorder was one reason that new dramas had to
meet the approval of a censor before they could be performed, a rule in place since 1737. Another restriction was that only the
theaters royal (in London, Drury Lane and Covent Garden) had the legal right to produce "legitimate" (spoken word) drama,
leaving the other stages limited to entertainments— pantomimes and melodramas mainly—in which dialogue was by regulation
always combined with music. An evening's entertainment focused on legitimate drama would not have been so different. The
stages and auditoriums of the two theaters royal were huge spaces, which encouraged their managers to favor grandiose
spectacles or, more precisely, multimedia experiences, involving musicians, dancers, and artists who designed scenery, besides
players and playwrights.
This theatrical culture's demotion of words might explain why the poets of the era, however stagestruck, found drama
uncongenial. Some of the poets' plays were composed to be read rather than performed: "closet dramas," such as Byron's
Manfred, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and most of Baillie's Plays on the Passions, permitted experimentation with topic and
form.

Other Literary Forms - The Novel

Novels at the start of the Romantic period were immensely popular but not quite respectable. Loose in structure, they seemed
to require fewer skills than other literary genres. This genre lacked the classic pedigree claimed by poetry and drama. It attracted
an undue proportion of readers who were women, and who, by consuming its escapist stories of romantic love, risked
developing false ideas of life. It likewise attracted too many writers who were women. (By the 1780s women were publishing as
many novels as men.)

By this time, too, the genre had its historians, who delineated the novel's origins and rise and in this manner established its
particularity against the more reputable literary forms. It was having a canon created for it too; figures like Barbauld and Scott
compiled and introduced collections of the best novels. So equipped, the novel began to endanger poetry's long-held monopoly
on literary prestige.

Gothic Novel
Another innovation in novel-writing took shape, strangely enough, as a recovery of what was old. Writers whom we now
describe as the Gothic novelists revisited the romance, the genre identified as the primitive forerunner of the modern novel,
looking to a medieval (i.e., "Gothic") Europe that they pictured as a place of gloomy castles, devious Catholic monks, and stealthy
ghosts. So, the end of the 18th century brought the so-called Gothic novels to popularity.
The interest in such novel was extraordinary and common to all strata of society. Their influence did not cease after this period:
today’s ghost and horror novels came from the 18th century.
The Gothic stories aimed to arouse terror in the reader in order to realise all his potentialities of his mind beyond reason. . The
nature of this fear seemed to reflect this specific historical moment, characterised by increasing disillusionment with
Enlightenment rationality and by the bloody Revolutions in America and France.

The genre had much success in the 19th century, as witnessed in prose by Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe as well as Charles Dickens with his novella, A Christmas Carol, and in
poetry in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron. Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late
Victorian era, is Bram Stoker's Dracula. The name Gothic, which originally referred to the Goths, and then came to mean
"German",[2] refers to the Gothic architecture of the medieval era of European history, in which many of these stories take
place. This extreme form of Romanticism was very popular throughout Europe, especially among English- and German-language
writers and artists.
They investigated forbidden areas of consciousness, thus symbolising the rejection of the limits imposed by reality. The Gothic
novels followed the same pattern and the main features were:

 Great importance given to terrifying description

 Ancient and unusual settings like old castles and mysterious abbeys
 Use of supernatural beings like vampires, monsters and ghosts.
 Stereotyped characters like heroines persecuted by satanic characters.
 Very complicated plots linked to mysterious elements.
e.g. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

This Gothic turn was another instance of the period's "romance revival," another variation on the effort to renew the literature
of the present by reworking the past.
Gothic horrors gave many writers a language in which to examine the nature of power—the elements of sadism and masochism
in the relations between men and women, for instance. And frequently the Gothic novelists probe the very ideas of historical
accuracy and legitimacy that critics use against them, and meditate on who is authorized to tell the story of the past and who is
not.
Scott establishes the master theme of the early-nineteenth century novel: the question of how the individual consciousness
intermeshes with larger social structures, of how far character is the product of history and how far it is not.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Jane Austen appeared on the scene with her “novel of manners”, based on the fact that
there is a vital relationship between manners, social behaviour and characters. They are set in the level of society where people
don’t have to struggle for survival. It explores characaters, personal relationships, class distinctions and their effect on
characters; the role of money and the comlications of love and friendship within this social world. Language is used in a different
ways depending on characters, some of whom are blunt, other subtle, and other ironical. Passions and emotions are not
expressed directly but more sublty.
Jane Austen's brilliance as a satirist of the English leisure class often prompts literary historians to compare her works to witty
Restoration and eighteenth-century comedies. But she created unforgettable heroines who live in time and change. As with
other Romantics, Austen's topic is revolution—revolutions of the mind. The momentous event in her fictions, is the change of
mind that creates the possibility of love.

English Romanticism covers the period between the French Revolution and the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. It
was never a unified movement, although there were certain features that distinguish it from the age of Enlightenment.

Where the Enlightenment had emphasised objectivity and reason, Romanticism valued the subjective and irrational
parts of human nature: emotion, imagination, introspection and a relationship with nature.

Apart from the poet William Blake, in English literature there two great generations of poets: William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the first; Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley nd John Keats in the second. These writers never
formed a movement but they shared a feeling that they were giving voice to a period of political, social and intellectual
change.

So, in the last thirty years of the 18th century a new sensibility became dominant which came to be known in literature as
romanticism, claiming the supremacy of feelings and emotions.It included elements of introspectivity, nostalgia, emotion and
individualism, and it led to a new way of considering the role of man in the universe. The new appeal to the heart and to the
relationship between reason and emotions expressed itself in various ways. There was a growing interest in humble and
everyday life and great attention was paid to the countryside as a place where there could still be arelationship with nature, as
opposed to industrialized towns. A new taste for the desolate – the love of ruins - was part of a revival of a past perceived as
contrasting with present reality. There was also a revolution in the concept of nature. It was no longer an abstract and
philosophical concept, something which man could control thanks to his faculty of reason; slowly, it began to be perceived as a
manifestation of a divine power on earth.

The Romance and the Novel (dagli approfondimenti)

The word romance has a long history. It originally identified a specific language, Old French, and then came to mean any work
written in French. Because medieval French literature consisted mainly of stories about knights and their exploits, the meaning
of romance narrowed further to mean tales, written in either prose or poetry, about knights.
Over time, the word came both to refer to the novel and to be distinguished from the novel. Used in the latter sense, it usually
denoted fiction that disregarded the limits of everyday life in action and characterization, emphasized the mystery of life, was
remote in time or place, used extravagant settings, and relied on coincidence. It tends to present extreme experiences,
contradictions, complex feelings, disorder, and disunity, often ending in ambiguity.
The distinction between the novel and the romance is in fact somewhat slippier. For one thing, there is not general agreement
about the characteristics of the novel itself. In addition, the same work may be called a novel by one critic and a romance by
another; this is particularly true of Gothic fiction, with its use of magic, mystery, and horrors.
Further complicating the debate of novel versus romance is the practice of combining the romance and the novel in one work, so
that it contains elements of both. Sir Walter Scott, whose novels influenced generations of novelists and formed the taste of
generations of readers, sharply distinguished between the novel and the romance but at the same time allowed for the
categories overlapping:
We would be rather inclined to describe a Romance as ‘a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon
marvellous and uncommon incidents;' thus being opposed to the kindred term Novel, which Johnson has described as ‘ a smooth
tale, generally of love'; but which we would rather define as ‘a fictitious narrative, differing from the Romance because the
events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events, and the modern state of society.' Assuming these definitions,
it is evident, from the nature of the distinction adopted, that there may exist compositions which it is difficult to assign precisely
or exclusively to the one class or the other; and which, in fact, partake of the nature of both. But, generally speaking, the
distinction will be found broad enough to answer all general and useful purposes (1824). Generally, the romance was regarded
with disfavor in the eighteenth century, primarily because it appealed to imagination over judgment or reason and because its
extravagances and exaggerations were unnatural. As the century proceeded, however, tastes began to diverge and the romance
found defenders. Bishop Hurd asked: "May there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the views of a
genius, and to the ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic moderns have gone too far in their perpetual ridicule and
contempt of it?" (1762) . Horace Walpole justified The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel in English, in part as a new kind of
romance, a blending of the ancient and the modern romance. The ancient romance, he explained, was all "imagination and
improbability"; heroines and heroes alike acted and spoke unrealistically and had unrealistic emotions. The modern romance or
novel, in contrast, successfully copied nature but was prosaic, unimaginative. Walpole asserted that he was giving his fancy free
rein to invent interesting situations at the same time that his characters, who acted as moral agents, behaved and spoke the way
"mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions." Clara Reeves succinctly distinguished the two genres: "The Novel is
a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it was written. The Romance in lofty and elevated language,
describes what has never happened nor is likely to." In her view, the goal of the romance was "first, to excite the attention; and
secondly, to direct it to some useful, or at least innocent end" (1778). In her romance she included only "a sufficient degree of
the marvellous to excite attention; enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the
pathetic to engage the heart on its behalf." Following Walpole's lead, the early Gothic writers tended to call their fiction
romances, e.g., Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest and A Sicilian Romance. The Gothic romance was the most popular
form of fiction from the 1790s through the early 19th century.
The debate about whether the novel and the romance are different genres and if so, what that difference might be, continued
through the nineteenth century into the twentieth century not just in England but in the United States also. Hawthorne regarded
The Scarlet Letter as a romance; as a romance writer, he had crossed the boundary of ordinarily opposed states, reality and
imagination: Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly–making
every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility–is a medium the most suitable for a romance
writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs,
with each in separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basked, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the
sofa; the bookcase; the picture on the wall–all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that
they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this
change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's whose; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse–whatever, in
a word, has been used or played with during the day is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still
almost as vividly present as by daylight (1850).
Henry James concisely abstracted the type of experience presented by the romance–"experience liberated, so to speak;
experience disengaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, exempt form the conditions that we usually know to attach to it" (1877).
Using this criterion, he classified The American as a romance.
For Robert Lewis Stevenson, the distinction between the two genres was a matter of a work's imaginative appeal and reader
response to the work: We are always aware that we are reading a story or are in a theatre watching a play. The romance, in
contrast, actively involves us imaginatively.... Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is
there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life; and when the game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in it
with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire
delight, fiction is called romance (1882).
The relationship of the romance and the novel took a different form for Conrad, based on the connection between life in
general, his life, and his fiction. He was conscious of the problematic nature of his vision and material, and he struggled to
express his sense of the romantic nature of reality, "of romanticism in relation to life, not of romanticism in relation to
imaginative literature.' His own life, which he acknowledged did not follow conventional patterns, was very far from giving a
larger scope of my imagination. On the contrary, the mere fact of dealing with matters outside the general run of everyday
experience laid me under the obligation of a more scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own sensations. The problem was to
make unfamiliar things credible. To do that I had to create for them, to reproduce for them, to envelop them in their proper
atmosphere of actuality. This was the hardest task of all and the most important, in view of that conscientious rendering of truth
in thought and fact, which has always been my aim.
In contrast to Hawthorne, who strove to transform through imagination the ordinary, the familiar, the everyday into the strange,
the ideal, the magical, Conrad strove to make the strange, the outrageous, and the enigmatic into the familiar and the everyday
so that it would be believable to readers.
The debate about the 2 genres is a debate about the nature of reality as well as about the presentation of that reality and
conformity to society’s rules and values.

Difference between ‘Novel’ and ‘Romance’

The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception of characterization. The romancer does not attempt
to create “real people” so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes. It is in the romance that we find
Jung’s libido, anima, and shadow reflected in the hero, heroine, and villain respectively. That is why the romance so often
radiates a glow of subjective intensity that the novel lacks, and why a suggestion of allegory is constantly creeping in around its
fringes. Certain elements of character are released in the romance which make it naturally a more revolutionary form than the
novel The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a
stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with
individuality, with characters in yacuo idealized by revery, and, however conservative he may be, something nihilistic and
untamable is likely to keep breaking out of his pages. The prose romance, then, is an independent form of fiction to be
distinguished from the novel and extracted from the miscellaneous heap of prose works now covered by that term. Even in the
other heap known as short stories one can isolate the tale form used by Poe, which bears the same relation to the full romance
that the stories of Chekhov or Catherine Mansfield do to the novel. “Pure” examples of either form are never found; there is
hardly any modern romance that could not be made out to be a novel, and vice versa. The forms of prose fiction are mixed, like
racial strains in human beings, not separable like the sexes. In fact the popular demand in fiction is always for a mixed form, a
romantic novel just romantic enough for the reader to project his libido on the hero and his anima on the heroine, and just novel
enough to keep these projections in a familiar world. It may be asked, therefore, what is the use of making the above distinction,
especially when, though undeveloped in criticism, it is by no means unrealized. It is no surprise to hear that Trollope wrote
novels and William Morris romances.
The reason is that a great romancer should be examined in terms of the conventions he chose. William Morris should not be left
on the side lines of prose fiction merely because the critic has not learned to take the romance form seriously. Nor, in view of
what has been said about the revolutionary nature of the romance, should his choice of that form be regarded as an “escape”
from his social attitude. If Scott has any claims to be a romancer, it is not good riticism to deal only with is defects as a novelist.
The romantic qualities of The Pilgrim’s Progress, too, its archetypal characterization and its revolutionary approach to religious
experience, make it a well-rounded example of a literary form: it is not merely a book swallowed by English literature to get
some religious bulk in its diet. Finally, when Hawthorne, in the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, insists that his story
should be read as romance and not as novel, it is possible that he meant what he said, even though he indicates that the prestige
of the rival form has induced the romancer to apologize for not using it.
Romance is older than the novel, a fact which has developed the historical illusion that it is something to be outgrown, a juvenile
and undeveloped form. The social affinities of the romance, with its grave idealizing of heroism and purity, are with the
aristocracy (for the apparent inconsistency of this with the revolutionary nature of the form just mentioned, see the introductory
comment on the mythos of romance in the previous essay). It revived in the period we call Romantic as part of the Romantic
tendency to archaic feudalism and a cult of the hero, or idealized libido. In England the romances of Scott and, in less degree, the
Brontes, are part of a mysterious Northumbrian renaissance, a Romantic reaction against the new industrialism in the Midlands,
which also produced the poetry of Wordsworth and Burns and the philosophy of Carlyle. It is not surprising, therefore, that an
important theme in the more bourgeois novel should be the parody of the romance and its ideals. The tradition established by
Don Quixote continues in a type of novel which looks at a romantic situation from its own point of view, so that the conventions
of the two forms make up an ironic compound instead of a sentimental mixture. Examples range from Northanger Abbey to
Madame Bovary and Lord Jim. The tendency to allegory in the romance may be conscious, as in The Pilgrim’s Progress, or
unconscious, as in the very obvious sexual mythopoeia in William Morris. The romance, which deals with heroes, is intermediate
between the novel, which deals with men, and the myth, which deals with gods. Prose romance first appears as a late
development of Classical mythology, and the prose Sagas of Iceland follow close on the mythical Eddas. The novel tends rather
to expand into a fictional approach to history. The soundness of Fielding’s instinct in calling Tom Jones a history is confirmed by
the general rule that the larger the scheme of a novel becomes, the more obviously its historical nature appears. As it is creative
history, however, the novelist usually prefers his material in a plastic, or roughly contemporary state, and feels cramped by a
fixed historical pattern. Waverley is dated about sixty years back from the time of writing and Little Dorrit about forty years, but
the historical pattern is fixed in the romance and plastic in the novel, suggesting the general principle that most “historical
novels” are romances. Similarly a novel becomes more romantic in its appeal when the life it reflects has passed away: thus the
novels of Trollope were read primarily as romances during the Second World War. It is perhaps the link with history and a sense
of temporal context that has confined the novel, in striking contrast to the world wide romance, to the alliance of time and
Western man.

Difference between romance and novel

The word romance originally indicated something written in old french. Since this type of literature dealt with stories of knights
and adventures, it came to refer to those type of stories. Nowdays we can say that a romance does not aim to create real
situations or real people. It has extravagant characters, heroes and heroines and and is set in exotic or remote places. The
themese are love, chivalry and adventures. On the other side, the novel pictures real life and people in the time it is written. It
deals with individuality and people wearing their social masks, and gives a detailed description of the world. The situation
complicates in cases where romance and novel are mixed, like in Walter Scott’s works, where the two categories overlap.

WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827

He was born in London in 1757 and died there in 1827. His origins were humble and he remained poor all his life. Trained as an
engraver, he practised this craft until he died, drawing the monuments in the old churches of London, especially Westminster
Abbey, from which derived his love of the Gothic style. Later he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts.
He was deeply aware of the great political and social issues of his age. He witnessed the evil effects of industrial development
on man's soul, and it was probably this which convinced him that the artist should have a new role: he should become the
guardian of the spirit and imagination.
The most important literary influence in his life was the Bible because it presented a complete vision of the world and its
history.
He had many acquaintances but very few intimate friends. One was his wife, Catherine Boucher, the illiterate daughter of a
market gardener, who shared his interest in the spiritual and assisted him in the production of his works. The other was his
younger brother Robert, who died at the age of twenty. Blake began to have visions of his dead brother and claimed that
he showed him the unique printing method he employed for his original work.

When he was ten years old, his father sent him to a drawing school where, working from statues, he became acquainted with
the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. The influence of Michelangelo is clear in Blake's works, especially in the exaggerated
muscular forms in his best-known illustrations. Blake broke with previous conventions and created a new kind of art which
emphasised the power of the imagination. He created his own method for making prints that combined picture and poetic
text called 'illuminated printing'. For him painting was not simply the illustration of poetry – it was its counterpart.

His experiences as a craftsman, visionary and radical contributed to the development of his poetry, which is regarded as early
Romantic because he rejected the neoclassical literary style and themes. He stressed the importance of imagination over
reason and believed that ideal forms should be created not from observations of nature but from inner visions. So, his
production was a reaction against the values and cultural patterns of the Preavious Age of Reason; his poetry was truly
Romantic in its triumph of imagination.
His rebellious attitude was the result of several influences:
 He shared the political ideas of leftwing radical like Paine and Mary Shelley’s father
 He shared free thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot that the individual had a right to happiness and pleasure outside the
restrictions of conventional morality and religion. He was concerned with the political and social problems of his time:
he supported the abolition of slavery and shared the enthusiasm for the egalitarian principles of the French
Revolution. He believed in Revolution as purifying violence necessary for the redemption of man.
Then he focused his attention on the evil consequences of the Industrial revolution: the injustices caused by a
materialistic attitude and the commercial exploitation of human beings. In his poems he sympathised with the victim
of the industrial society such as children and prostitutes, as well as with the victims of institutional oppression on
orphans and soldiers.
 The most important influence was the Bible because it presents a complete scheme, a toal vision of the world and its
history. His Christianity was not liturgical or moralistic. He believed in the reality of a spiritual world where the Church
is responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and the dualism that characterises man’s life. To this dualistic
view, he substituted a vision made up not of contraries, but of complementary opposites. E.g. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence. The possibility of progress lies in the
tension between opposites states of mind, not in their resolution by one gaining supremacy over the other. The 2
 states coexist not only in the human being but also in the figure of the Creator who can be at the same time the God
of love and the God of energy.

He considered the imagination as the mean through which Man could know the world because Imagination means “to see
more beyond material reality”. Therefore the poet becomes a sort of prophet who can see more deeply into reality.

Style: Blake's poems present a very simple structure and a highly individual use of symbols. He employed a central group of
symbols to form a context for all the minor symbols in the Songs; these are: the child, the father and Christ, representing
the states of innocence, experience and a higher innocence. His verse is linear and rhythmical; it shows a close relationship
between sound and meaning and is characterised by the frequent use of repetition.
In 1788 he began to experiment with relief etching, a method that he called "illuminated printing" (a term associating his works
with the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages) and used to produce most of his books of poems. He wrote the text in
reverse and also drew the illustration. To read a Blake poem without the pictures is to miss something important: Blake places
words and images in a relationship that is sometimes mutually enlightening and sometimes turbulent, and that relationship is an
aspect of the poem's argument.
In this mode of relief etching, he published Songs of Innocence (1789), then added supplementary poems and printed Songs of
Innocence and of Experience (1794). The two groups of poems represent the world as it is envisioned by what he calls "two
contrary states of the human soul." Gradually Blake's thinking about human history and his experience of life and suffering
articulated themselves in the "Giant Forms" and their actions, which came to constitute a complete mythology.

The collections of short lyrical verses Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) are the most accessible of
Blake's works.
The first is in the pastoral mode; the narrator is a shepherd who receives inspiration from a child in a cloud to pipe his songs
celebrating the divine in all creation. The imagery of the poems is full of lambs, flowers and children playing on the village
green; it deals with childhood as the symbol of innocence, a state of the soul connected with happiness, freedom and
imagination. The language is simple and musical, rich in symbols drawn from the Bible.
While Songs of Innocence was produced before the outbreak of the French Revolution, when Blake's enthusiasm for liberal
ideas was high, Songs of Experience appeared when the period of the Terror (1793-94) was at its height in France. A more
pessimistic view of life emerges in these 'Songs', which are intended to read together with Songs of Innocence so that the
paired poems comment each other, sometimes managing to convey an ironical view of the situation presented.
Experience, identified with adulthood, coexists with and completes Innocence, thus providing another point of view on reality.

L'opera poetica
La poesia giovanile di Blake mostra gli influssi delle sue letture: Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, la Bibbia, Ossian e gli scrittori
mistici. La sua ispirazione, però, non veniva tanto dai libri quanto da una inner light (luce interiore) che ne fece un veggente e un
profeta. Blake sostenne di aver avuto visioni di Dio e degli angeli già da piccolo e, crescendo, si convinse di essere oggetto di
visite da parte degli spiriti dei grandi uomini del passato (Omero, Virgilio, Dante, Milton e Voltaire). Per lui, quindi,
l'immaginazione era quella percezione soprasensoriale che metteva il poeta-profeta in contatto diretto con l'Essere Divino
facendolo identificare con l'universo. Il poeta o l'artista risultava capace di una visione che univa l'uomo e l'universo, il profeta
indicava la verità nascosta e le relazioni mistiche esistenti tra l'uomo, la natura e la divinità. Le sue opere più conosciute sono tre
raccolte di componimenti: Poetical sketches (1783), la sua prima raccolta poetica, comprende una serie di componimenti tutti
scritti prima del 1778, ma più interessanti sono i Songs of innocence (1789) e i Songs of experience (1794), entrambi in forma di
ballate in rima facili e spontanee: i primi parlano dell'infanzia come simbolo di un'innocenza intatta, condizione di una suprema
felicità e libertà; i secondi dell'esperienza, quella del male e della schiavitù, conseguenza delle leggi e delle istituzioni create
dall'uomo. Innocenza ed esperienza, condizioni opposte dell'anima dell'uomo, sono come i due poli opposti del paradiso e
dell'inferno, della felicità e del dolore, dell'amore e dell'odio. Ma né il bene (sentito come ragione passiva) né il male (sentito
come energia attiva) possono essere negati, poiché essi esistono in un'eterna unità di contrasto e complementarietà; così
innocenza ed esperienza sono entrambe necessarie alla pienezza della vita dell'uomo.

Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Songs of Innocence was etched in 1789, and in 1794 was combined with additional poems under the title Songs of Innocence
and of Experience; this collection was reprinted at various later times with varying arrangements of the poems. In his songs of
innocence Blake assumes the stance that he is writing "happy songs / Every child may joy to hear, "but they do not all depict an
innocent and happy world; many of them incorporate injustice, evil, and suffering. These aspects of the fallen world, however,
are represented as they appear to a "state" of the human soul that Blake calls "innocence" and that he expresses in a simple
pastoral language, in the tradition both of Isaac Watts's widely read Divine Songs for Children (1715) and of the picture-books for
child readers pioneered by mid-eighteenth-century booksellers such as John Newbery. The vision of the same world, as it
appears to the "contrary" state of the soul that Blake calls "experience," is an ugly and terrifying one of poverty, disease,
prostitution, war, and social, institutional, and sexual repression, epitomized in the ghastly representation of modern London.
Though each stands as an independent poem, a number of the songs of innocence have a matched counterpart, or "contrary," in
the songs of experience. Thus "Infant Joy" is paired with "Infant Sorrow," and the meek "Lamb" reveals its other aspect of
divinity in the flaming, wrathful "Tyger."

The Chimney Sweeper

The poem is in the first person singular. A very young chimney sweeper is speaking and is relating the evils of chimney
sweeping to the cruelties created by the sudden increase in wealth. The poem was used as a broadsheet or propaganda
against the evil of Chimney Sweeping. The Chimney Sweeper’s life was one of destitution and exploitation. The large houses
created by the wealth of trade had horizontal flues heating huge rooms which could be cleaned only by a small child crawling
through them. These flues literally became black coffins, which killed many little boys. A sweeper’s daily task was courting
death because of the hazards of suffocation and burns. These children were either orphans or founding or were sold by poor
parents to Master Sweepers for as little as two guineas. They suffered from cancers caused by the soot, and occasionally little
children terrified of the inky blackness of the Chimneys got lost within them and only their skeletons were recovered.

A little boy, is telling the story of his despairing life as well as

the sad tales of other chimney’s sweeper boys. The little boy
When my mother died I was very young, Quando morì la mamma ero piccino assai
narrates that he was very young when he died. He was then
And my father sold me while yet my tongue e il Babbo mi vendette appena fui capace sold by his father to a Master Sweeper when his age was so
tender that he could not even pronounce the word ‘sweep’ and
Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” di gridar "'zacamino!"; così che adesso a voi
cryingly pronounced it ‘weep’ and wept all the time. The pun
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. lustro il camino e dormo in mezzo alla fuliggine. intended through the use of word ‘weep’ three times in the
third line of this stanza holds pathetic significance. Most
chimney sweepers, like him, were so young that they could not
pronounce sweep and lisped ‘weep’. Since that tender age the
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head C'è Tommy Dacre che pianse quando la testolina little boy is sweeping chimney and sleeping at night in the soot-
smeared body, without washing off the soot.
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said, riccia come una schiena d'agnello gli raparono:
“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, /gli dissi: "Lascia perdere, pensa che con la In the second stanza, the little narrator tells us the woeful tale

testa of Tom Dacre. This is a very famous character in Blake’s many

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.” rasata la fuliggine non può sciupar la chioma".
poems. Tom was called ‘Dacre’ because he belonged to Lady
Dacre’s Almshouse, which was situated between St. James
Street and Buckingham Road. The inmates of the Almshouse
were foundling orphans, who were allowed to be adopted by
the poor only. It may be a foster father who encased the boy
Tom by selling him to a Master Sweeper. Tom wept when his
head was shaved, just as the back of a lamb is shaved for wool.
The narrator then told Tom not to weep and keep his peace.
The narrator told Tom to be calm because lice will not breed in
the pate without hair and there will be no risk for hair to catch
fire.

And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
Con ciò si mise buono, e quella notte stessa,
mentre era in sonno immerso, quale visione ebbe!
Mille spazzacamini (Dick, Joe, Ned e Jack)
stavano imprigionati in bare di fuliggine.
The third stanza continues the story of Tom who was calmed by
the consoling words of the narrator. That same night while
sleeping Tom saw a wonderful vision. He saw in his dream that
many Chimney sweepers, who were named Dick, Joe, Ned and
Jack, were dead and their bodies were lying in caged coffins,
made of black-colored wood.

In the fourth stanza, the vision is completed. An Angel, who was

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
E un Angelo arrivò con una chiave lucida
e aprì le loro bare, li rese tutti liberi;
e per un verde piano tra salti e risa corsero
a un fiume si lavarono, nel Sole poi brillarono.
carrying a shining key, came near the coffins. The Angel opened
the coffins containing the bodies and set all the bodies free
from the bondage of coffins. The freed little sweepers of the
chimney ran down a green ground, washed themselves in the
water of a river and dried themselves in the sunlight to give out
a clean shine. This was really a very delightful moment for
these chimney sweepers, who got freed from the shackles of
bondage labor, exploitation and child labor.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm/ Quel giorno era ben freddo, ma Tom felice
e caldo;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
E così nudi e bianchi, lasciati i loro sacchi,
montavan sulle nubi, giocavano nel vento;
e l'Angelo a Tom disse: "Se il bravo tu farai
per padre avrai il Signore, e triste non sarai".
E Tom qui si svegliò; ci alzammo ch'era buio,
coi sacchi e con le scope a lavorare andammo.
chi compie il suo dovere più nulla ha da temere.
In the fifth stanza, the little boy continues narrating the dream
vision of Tom. All the little boys were naked and white after
washing. They were naked because their bags of clothes were
left behind. They cast off the burden of life along with the bags
of soot at the time of death. Now naked and white, the little
chimney sweeper boys ride the clouds and play in the wind. The
image of clouds floating freely is Blake’s metaphor for the
freedom from the material boundaries of the body and an
important visual symbol. The Angel told Tom that if he would
be a good boy he would have God for his father and there
would never be lack of happiness for him.
In the last stanza of Blake’s poem, The Chimney Sweeper, the
narrator tells that Tom woke up and his dream vision broke up.
Tom and other little sweeper boys rose up from their beds in
the dark. They made themselves ready to work taking their
bags for soot and the brushes to clean chimney. The morning
was cold, but Tom, after the dream, was feeling warm and
happy.
In the last line of the poem, a moral has been thrown to us: If
all do their duty, they need not fear any harm. The last stanza
shows the reality of the sweepers’ life. The antithesis between
the vision of summer sunshine and this dark, cold reality is
deeply ironic. Even though the victims have been mollified, the
readers know that innocent trust is abused. Furthermore, this
 poem sarcastically attacks the advanced society that keep
their eyes shut towards these children.
The Lamb
The Lamb’ by William Blake was included in The Songs of Innocence published in 1789. It is regarded “as one of the great
lyrics of English Literature.” In the form of a dialogue between the child and the lamb, the poem is an amalgam of the
Christian script and pastoral tradition.
The lamb is a universal symbol of selfless innocence, Jesus the Lamb is the gentle imagination, the Divine
Humanity. The Lamb identifies with Christ to form a Trinity of child, Lamb, and Redeemer.
The poem presents the ideal of charity substantiating Christian compassion and Caritas or caring, the ideals of the Lamb of
God. However, the Christian connotations also contain the implications of sacrifice, death, and tragedy; Christ the human
sacrifice who look upon himself the sings of the world.”
In ‘The Lamb’ Blake explores themes of religion, innocence and morality. Throughout the lines, he, or his speaker, expresses
his appreciation for God and what he represents. The “lamb,” or Christ, should be a source of celebration for all who see or
hear him. Its innocence is one of the most important features. All people should strive for the image of the lamb.
The Lamb’ by William Blake consists of two stanzas, each with five rhymed couplets. Repetition in the first and last couplet of
each stanza turns these lines into a refrain and helps in providing the poem its song-like quality. The flowing l’s and soft vowel
sounds also make a contribution to this effect, and also bring forth the bleating of a lamb or the lisping character of a child’s
chant.
The Lamb is a didactic poem. In this poem, the poet pays a tribute to Lord Christ who was innocent and pure like a child and
meek and mild like a lamb. The little child asks the lamb if he knows who has created it, who has blessed it with life, and with
the capacity to feed by the stream and over the meadow. The child asks him if the lamb knows who has given it bright and soft
wool, which serves as its clothing, who has given it a tender voice that fills the valley with joy.

Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
nutriti
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Agnellino, sai chi fece?
sai chi ti ha creato
Chi ti ha messo al mondo e ti disse di
dai ruscelli o nei prati
chi ti diede la bella veste
il più morbido vestito di lana chiaro
chi ti diede una così delicata voce
Che rende allegra ogni valle?
agnellino chi ti fece
sai chi ti ha creato?
In the first stanza of ten lines of William Blake’s poem The Lamb, the child who is
supposed to be speaking to the lamb, gives a brief description of the little animal
as he sees it. The lamb has been blessed with life and with the capacity to feed by
the stream and over the meadow; it has been endowed with bright and soft wool
which serves as its clothing; it has a tender voice which fills the valley with joy.
The readers here are provided with a true portrait of a lamb. In the poem, the
child of innocence repeatedly asks the lamb as to who made him. Does he know
who created him (the lamb)? The same question has been put repeatedly all
through the first lines of the poem. The child addresses Little Lamb to ask him
who made him and wants to ascertain whether he knows who made him. The
child wants to know who gave the Lamb his life, who fed him while living along
the river on the other said of the meadow. H also wants to know from the Lamb
who supplied him with pleasant body-cover (clothing) which is softest, full of
wool and shining.
The Lamb is also asked by the child who gave him such a delicate bleating voice,
which resounds a happy note in the surrounding valleys. The stanza is marked by
the child’s innocence which is the first stage in Blake’s journey to the truth.
“The Child of Innocence lives by intuition enjoys a spontaneous communion with
nature and sees the divine in all things.”

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Agnellino te lo dico io
Agnellino te lo dico io
egli porta il tuo stesso nome
perchè anche lui si fa chiamare agnello
Egli è mite e buono
in un bimbo ‘incarnò
io un bambino e tu un agnello
Siamo chiamati col suo nome
Agnellino che Dio ti benedica
Agnellino che Dio ti benedica
In the second stanza of the poem, there is an identification of the lamb, Christ,
and the child. Christ has another name, that is, Lamb, because Christ is meek and
mild like lamb. Christ was also a child when he first appeared on this earth as the
Son of God. Hence the appropriateness of the following lines: “He became a little
child:/I a child & thou a lamb,/We are called by his name.” The child in this poem
speaks to the lamb as if the lamb were another child and could respond to what is
being said. The child shows his deep joy in the company of the lamb who is just
like him, meek, and mild. The poem conveys the spirit of childhood – the purity,
the innocence, the tenderness of childhood, and the affection that a child feels
for little creatures.
A religious note is introduced in the poem because of the image of Christ as a
child. The Lamb is a pastoral poem. The pastoral poem note in Blake is another
symbol of joy and innocence. In the next ten lines of the second stanza from
William Blake’s poem The Lamb, the child himself proceeds to answer the
questions he has asked the Lamb in the first stanza. The child says that the
person, who has created the Lamb and has given many gifts described in the first
stanza, is himself by the name of the Lamb.
It is Jesus Christ who calls himself a Lamb. Jesus the Lamb is meek (submissive)
and mild (soft-natured), and he became a child for the sake of mankind. The
narrator (I) is a child, he is Lamb and they both are called by Jesus’s name. The
Lamb identifies with Christ to form a Trinity of Child, Lamb, and Redeemer (Jesus).

The Tyger
The Tyger’ was first published in William Blake’s 1794 volume Songs of Experience, which contains many of his most
celebrated poems. The Songs of Experience was designed to complement Blake’s earlier collection, Songs of Innocence
(1789), and ‘The Tyger’ should be seen as the later volume’s answer to “the Lamb”.
Framed as a series of questions, ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright’ (as the poem is also often known), in summary, sees Blake’s
speaker wondering about the creator responsible for such a fearsome creature as the tiger. The fiery imagery used
throughout the poem conjures the tiger’s aura of danger: fire equates to fear. Don’t get too close to the tiger, Blake’s poem
seems to say, otherwise you’ll get burnt.
 Tyger Tyger, burning bright, Tigre, Tigre, che bruci luminosa
In the forests of the night; nelle foreste della notte,

What immortal hand or eye, The first stanza and sixth stanza, alike in every respect except for the shift from
quale immortale mano o occhio

‘Could frame’ to ‘Dare frame’, frame the poem, asking about the immortal creator
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? ha potuto foggiare la tua orribile simmetria?
responsible for the beast.

In what distant deeps or skies. In quali distanti profondità o cieli The second stanza continues the fire imagery established by the image of the
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? è bruciato il fuoco dei tuoi occhi? tiger ‘burning bright’, with talk of ‘the fire’ of the creature’s eyes, and the notion
On what wings dare he aspire? of the creator fashioning the tiger out of pure fire, as if he (or He) had reached his
Su quali ali ha osato levarsi?

hand into the fire and moulded the creature from it. (The image succeeds, of
What the hand, dare seize the fire? Quale mano osò afferrare il fuoco?
course, because of the flame-like appearance of a tiger’s stripes.) It must have
been a god who played with fire who made the tiger.

And what shoulder, & what art, E quale braccio, & quale arte, In the third and fourth stanzas, Blake introduces another central metaphor,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? poté piegare i nervi del tuo cuore? explicitly drawing a comparison between God and a blacksmith. It is as if the
And when thy heart began to beat, Creator made the blacksmith in his forge, hammering the base materials into the
E quando il tuo cuore prese a battere,

living and breathing ferocious creature which now walks the earth.
What dread hand? & what dread feet? quale mano atroce? & quali atroci piedi?

What the hammer? what the chain, Quale il martello? quale la catena, In the third and fourth stanzas, Blake introduces another central metaphor,
In what furnace was thy brain? in quale fornace era il tuo cervello? explicitly drawing a comparison between God and a blacksmith. It is as if the
What the anvil? what dread grasp, Creator made the blacksmith in his forge, hammering the base materials into the
quale l'incudine? quale atroce stretta
living and breathing ferocious creature which now walks the earth.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp! osò prendere in mano i suoi mortali terrori?

When the stars threw down their spears Quando le stelle buttarono giù le loro lance The fifth stanza is more puzzling, but ‘stars’ have long been associated with
And water’d heaven with their tears: e bagnarono con le loro lacrime il cielo, human destiny (as the root of ‘astrology’ highlights). For Kathleen Raine, this
Did he smile his work to see? stanza can be linked with another of William Blake’s works, The Four Zoas, where
sorrise lui a vedere il proprio lavoro?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
the phrase which we also find in ‘The Tyger’, ‘the stars threw down their spears’,
Colui che fece l'Agnello ti ha fatto?
also appears. There it is the godlike creator of the universe (Urizen in Blake’s
mythology) who utters it; Urizen’s fall, and the fall of the stars and planets, are
what brought about the creation of life on Earth in Blake’s Creation story. When
the Creator fashioned the Tyger, Blake asks, did he look with pride upon the
animal he had created?

Tyger Tyger burning bright, Tigre, Tigre, che bruci luminosa

In the forests of the night: nelle foreste della notte,
What immortal hand or eye, quale immortale mano o occhio
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? ha osato foggiare la tua orribile simmetria?

The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness,
meekness, and peace.

The Tyger" presents a duality between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity, and Blake believes that to see one, the hand
that created "The Lamb", one must also see the other, the hand that created "The Tyger”: "Did he who made the Lamb
make thee?"
Taken together, the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and
inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than either offers independently. They offer a
good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the perspectives of innocence and experience he projects.

Infant Joy

This poem focuses on the gift of life in a newborn, and celebrates happiness. It is presented in a form of an imaginary dialogue
between a mother and his newborn child who's two days old. The mother asks the baby how he wants to be called, and he
names himself Joy because joy is the only emotion he has experienced so far. The mother blesses the baby with the name Joy,
and hopes that joy will always be his lot in life. The fact that the baby names himself Joy may represent Blake's desire to see
humans determine their own state of bliss and their own destiny, not following the constrictions established by social and
religious institutions.

The second stanza develops this idea of the infant’s future happiness. ‘Infant Joy’ is instantly recognisable as part of William
Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Innocence. The emphasis is on joy, wonder, and innocence, whereas the corresponding poem
from the later Songs of Experience, ‘Infant Sorrow’, will strike a very different note. But ‘Infant Joy’ is noteworthy for being
spoken by both the newborn baby and its mother: ‘I am but two days old’, speaks the joyous infant, while another voice – as
we learn from the second stanza, the voice of the infant’s mother – responds with the question, ‘What shall I call thee?’ (Of
course, ‘Joy’ can be a noun denoting delight but also, happily, a girls’ name.) An infant may be without a name but it is also
without a voice, as the very word attests (from the Latin infans, ‘unable to speak’). As with so many of his poems, in ‘Infant
Joy’ Blake is giving a voice to the (literally) voiceless.

I have no name non ho nome But ‘Infant Joy’ is noteworthy for being spoken by both the newborn baby and its
I am but two days old.— ma sono nato due giorni fa mother: ‘I am but two days old’, speaks the joyous infant, while another voice –
What shall I call thee? as we learn from the second stanza, the voice of the infant’s mother – responds
Come ti chiamerò
with the question, ‘What shall I call thee?’ (Of course, ‘Joy’ can be a noun
 I happy am io sono felice
denoting delight but also, happily, a girls’ name.)
Joy is my name,— il mio nome è Gioia
Sweet joy befall thee! Che la Dolce gioia sia con te

Pretty joy! Cara Gioia

Sweet joy but two days old, Dolce Gioia di soli due giorni
The second stanza of ‘Infant Joy’ is spoken exclusively by the infant’s mother,
Sweet joy I call thee; Dolce gioia ti chiamerò
praising the child’s prettiness and sweetness. The naming of the infant as ‘joy’
Thou dost smile. Tu sorridi binds together the infant and the idea of joy and happiness, in a hopeful act
I sing the while io ancora canto intended by the new mother to hold good omens for her child’s future life.
Sweet joy befall thee. Che la gioia sia con te

Infant Sorrow
“Infant Sorrow”is the counterpart to “Infant Joy”’: whereas ‘Infant Joy’ appeared in William Blake’s 1789
volume Songs of Innocence, ‘Infant Sorrow’ was published in his 1794 volume Songs of Experience. “Infant Sorrow” is quite
different from “Infant Joy”. In contrast to "Infant joy", Blake wrote "Infant sorrow", in which he also speaks about birth, but
from an infant's prospective, and focuses on the pain and sorrow. The poet suggests that child birth is not always joyful and
happy, but can bring sorrow and pain. He seems an unwanted child, also because of the behavior of the parents: in fact his
mother groaned with the pain of childbirth, but his father also wept, possibly because the father knew the full horrors of the
world the infant was being born into. Indeed, the infant tells us that the world it was born into was dangerous. But the infant,
too, contains a hint of menace, being like a ‘fiend hid in a cloud’. The unexpected simile here is striking: angels go on clouds,
not fiends, and newborn infants are associated with angelic innocence rather than fiendish possession. The infant tells us it
struggled as its father held it, disliking the swaddling bands of cloth that enclosed it. As the infant is ‘bound’, almost in chains,
and tired from its fruitless struggles, it resigns itself to sulking in its mother’s breast.
This poem may perhaps represent Blake's aversion to the industrial revolution, in fact in that period many factory owners
exploited young women and children who worked in their factories. The child uses the past tense to describe his own birth, so
he possibly has already grown up and regrets the time when he could find comfort by just laying on his mother's breast. But
also the poem can represent a rebellion against institutions since the child is struggling in his father hands and striving against
his swaddling bands.

My mother groan’d! my father wept. Mia madre gemette! mio padre pianse, Here Blake focuses on the pain and sorrow childbirth is not always happy and
Into the dangerous world I leapt: nel periglioso mondo balzai, joyful.
Helpless, naked, piping loud; impotente,nudo,lamentandomi forte,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud. come un fantasma nascosto in una nube.

Struggling in my father’s hands: Lottando nelle mani di mio padre,

Striving against my swaddling bands: agitandomi contro le bende che dovevano avvolgermi,

Bound and weary I thought best legato e stanco, ritenni la cosa migliore
To sulk upon my mother’s breast. il ripiegarmi sul petto di mia madre.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Was born in Cumberland (now called Cumbria) in the English Lake District in 1770; this was the beautiful region where he
spent his childhood and became his major source of inspiration. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and in 1790
he went on a walking tour of France and the Alps. His experience in Revolutionary France filled him with enthusiasm for
democratic ideals which he hoped could lead to a new and just social order.
The brutal developments of the Revolution and the war between England and France brought him to the edge of a nervous
breakdown. The despair and disillusionment of these years were healed by contact with nature, which he rediscovered in
Dorset, where he went to live with his sister Dorothy in 1795. She remained his most faithful friend: she constantly supported
his poetry, she copied down his poems and recorded their life in her Journals, which sometimes provide interesting insight into
the experiences which generated Wordsworth's poems.
In the same year he moved to Somerset to be near Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Their friendship proved crucial to the
development of English Romantic poetry: they produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, which appeared
anonymously in 1798. The second edition of 1800 contained Wordsworth's famous 'Preface', which was to become the
'Manifesto of English Romanticism'. His reputation as a poet grew steadily and, in 1843, he was made Poet Laureate.

Coleridge claimed that he had detected signs of genius in Wordsworth's rather conventional poem about his tour in the Alps,
Descriptive Sketches, published in 1793. Now he hailed Wordsworth unreservedly as "the best poet of the age." The two men
met almost daily, talked for hours about poetry, and wrote prolifically. Although brought to this abrupt end, that short period of
collaboration resulted in one of the most important books of the era, Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, published
anonymously in 1798. This short volume opened with Coleridge's AncientMariner and included three other poems by Coleridge,
some lyrics in which Wordsworth celebrated the experience of nature, and a number of verse anecdotes drawn from the lives of
the rural poor. The book closed with Wordsworth's great descriptive and meditative poem in blank verse, "Tintern Abbey." This
poem inaugurated what modern critics call Wordsworth's "myth of nature": his presentation of the "growth" of his mind to
maturity, a process unfolding through the interaction between the inner world of the mind and the shaping force of external
Nature.

The Manifesto of English Romanticism

He rejected the standard of the 18th century poetry, its artificial and elevated language which he called “poetic diction”.
In his Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads he stated that poetry should deal with everyday situation and with ordinary
people, especially humble and rural people. Even the language should be simple and the objects mentioned called by their
ordinary names. To him, in low and rustic life, man is more direct and nearer to his own purer passions.

Man and the natural world

Wordsworth is interested in the relationship between the natural world and the human consciousness. His poetry offers a
detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature, of the emotions and sensations which arise from this
contact, rather than the objective observation of natural phenomena.
When a natural concept is described, the main focus of interest is the poet’s response to that object. Man and nature are
inseparable. Nature comforts man in sorrow,it is a source of pleasure and joy. It teaches man to love and to act in a moral way.

Recollection in tranquillity

All genuine poetry 'takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity' so that what we read in the poem results from the
active, vital relationship between present and past experience. Through the re-creative power of memory, an emotion is
reproduced and purified in poetic form so that a second emotion, 'kindred' to the first one, is generated.

The poet's task

The poet, though a common man, has a greater sensibility and the ability to penetrate the heart of things. The power of
imagination enables him to communicate his knowledge, so that he becomes a teacher who shows men how to understand their
feelings and improve their moral being. His task consists in drawing attention to the ordinary things of life, to the humblest
people, where the deepest emotions and truths are to be found.

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)

The first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published jointly with Coleridge in 1798; to it, Wordsworth prefixed an "Advertisement"
asserting that the majority of the poems were "to be considered as experiments" to determine "how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure." In the second edition of
1800, Wordsworth, aided by frequent conversations with Coleridge, expanded the Advertisement into a preface that justified
the poems not as experiments, but as exemplifying the principles of all good poetry. The Preface was enlarged for the third
edition of Lyrical Ballads, published two years later.
The Preface deserves its reputation as a revolutionary manifesto about the nature of poetry. Like many radical statements,
however, it claims to go back to the implicit principles that governed the great poetry of the past but have been perverted in
recent practice. Wordsworth discussed about the valid language of poetry, on which he bases his attack on the "poetic diction"
of eighteenth-century poets. His Preface implicitly denies the traditional assumption that the poetic genres constitute a
hierarchy (from epic and tragedy at the top down through comedy, satire, pastoral at the lowest);

When Wordsworth asserted in the Preface that he chose to represent the situations from common life, he translated his
democratic sympathies into critical terms, justifying his use of peasants, children, outcasts, criminals, and madwomen as serious
subjects of poetic and even tragic concern. He also wrote in a simple language, attacking the neoclassical principle that required
the language to be elevated over everyday speech.
Wordsworth's views about the valid language of poetry are based on the new premise that "all good poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings"—spontaneous, that is, at the moment of composition.
Wordsworth included common people and ordinary things and events, as well as he justifyed a poetry of sincerity rather than of
artifice, expressed in the ordinary language of its time.

From Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802)
The Subject and the Language
Wordsworth initially considered his poems to be an experiment, suggesting that he wasn’t all that
confident that the public would receive them warmly. It would appear that as the first edition of
the Lyrical Ballads were well-received, Wordsworth should feel at ease. However, a certain degree
of uneasiness remains—Wordsworth still feels the need to explain his experimental poetry in a
preface.

Wordsworth acknowledges that his friend (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) supplied several poems in the collection, including Rime of
the Ancient Mariner. He then relates that he and his friends wish to start a new type of poetry, poetry of the sort seen in Lyrical
Ballads. Wordsworth notes that he was initially unwilling to write the preface as some sort of systemic defense of this new
genre, because he doesn’t want to reason anyone into liking these poems. He also says the motives behind starting this new
genre of poetry are too complex to fully articulate in so few words. Still, he has decided to furnish a preface: his poems are so
different from the poems of his age that they require at least a brief explanation as to their conception.

In drawing on many great yet disparate poets of old, Wordsworth implies that at different times, different styles of poetry were
considered great. In other words, each generation lives in a different situation and thus naturally prefers a different style of
poetry that somehow aligns with or responds to the times. Thus, Wordsworth writes differently from his contemporaries not
because he is lazy, but because he senses that the changing times need a new style of poetry to match.

Wordsworth’s decision to use common life and language in his poetry implies that upper-class life and lofty language are
insufficient for poetic expression. Throughout the preface, Wordsworth seems to equate cosmopolitanism with corruption.

He believes that poetry ought to be serious and profound—poems need to have a purpose and cannot be intended purely
for shallow entertainment. Thus, readers can infer that good poetry should seriously deal with both emotions and
thoughts. This sort of poetry will help people become better people. He uses common language because it’s realistic, and,
thus, relayable. He finds abstract ideas to be distancing—it gives readers the sense that what they are reading about is
intangible and does not apply to real life.

Wordsworth reiterates that there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language of prose. People
often personify poetry and painting as sisters, but Wordsworth thinks poetry and prose are even closer.
Wordsworth also sees a great benefit in using rhyme and meter: poems can excite painful emotions, and the presence of
something “regular” may help soften and restrain those painful emotions “by an intertexture of ordinary feeling.”
Wordsworth doesn’t think poets should write in the heat of an emotional moment, as the poet may be confused about what
they are really feeling. They must first contemplate their emotion in peace to achieve a proper understanding of what they felt
before engaging in the writing process. Poetry written in the heat of the moment may be too overwhelming for the reader.

I wandered lonely as a cloud (Poems in two volumes)

Written in 1804, the plot is extremely simple and depicts the poet’s wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils, located
in the countryside near a lake and trees, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely, bored, or
restless.
He imagined that the daffodils were dancing and invoking him to join and enjoy the breezy nature of the fields. By comparing
himself to a cloud in the first line of the poem, the speaker signifies his close identification with the nature that surrounds him.
The speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural object, a cloud—“I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high...”, and
the daffodils are continually personified as human beings, dancing and “tossing their heads” in “a crowd, a host”, as if they are a
group of people. Wordsworth expresses feelings for nature through these symbolic objects. This technique implies an inherent
unity between man and nature, making it one of Wordsworth’s most basic and effective methods for instilling in the reader the
feeling the poet so often describes himself as experiencing.
The poem consists of four six-line stanzas, each of which follow an ababcc rhyme scheme and are written in iambic tetrameter,
giving the poem a subtle back-and-forth motion that recalls swaying daffodils.

The poet is wandering in a state of loneliness and absent-

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. muovevano le loro teste in una danza allegra.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
is A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
Vagavo solo come una nuvola
che nuota su alte valli e colline
quando tutt'intorno io vidi una folla,
una multitudine di narcisi dorati
vicino al lago, sotto i fiori
fluttuando e danzando nel prato.
Continuando come le stelle che brillano
e splendono nella via lattea
loro si stendevano in una linea senza fine
lungo il margine della baia
io ne vidi 10 mila in un colpo d'occhio
Le onde accanto a loro danzavano; ma loro
superavano le spumeggianti onde in gioia
un poeta non poteva nn essere allegro,
in così allegra compagnia:
io guardavo e guardavo ma pensai subito
quale benessere la visione mi aveva portato:
mindedness (as a cloud : is a simile, he compares his loneliness to
that of a cloud and the cloud symbolises his integration with the
natural world). Both he and the cloud are floating (floats= fluttua) on
high, when he saw a field full of golden daffodils (they are seen as
a crowd). Both he and the cloud are aspects of the world, which is
subject to the laws of nature but they can still retain their freedom
in spite of this.
He personifies the daffodils as dancers ( dancing in the breeze =
danzanti nella brezza), dancing gaily as part of the beauty of nature
In the second lines the poet shows the daffodils as part of a
universal order and he compares them to the stars ( as the stars) in
the Milky way. They stretched in never-ending line = The daffodils
(they) are ( stretched = si estendono) in never-ending line (fila
infinita)
The sight of the daffodils amazes the poet at first because of their
great number in fact they a crowd, continuous, ten thousand ( saw I
at a glance = viste con un’occhiata), host, never ending-line. The
poet wants to underline that the flower are really many.
The daffodils were tossing(=scuotevano) their heads in
a sprightly (=allegra/briosa) dance.
The daffodils are then compared with the waves on the lake, which
also dance( The waves beside them danced), though not with so
much glee (= gaiezza/gioia; is a peculiar word which the poet uses
when talking of the joy of creative activity) as the flowers ( Out-did
the sparkling waves = superavano le onde spumeggianti).
The poet is gay because the joy of nature affects the poet. The
rhythm falls with a special emphasis on the “gazing” ( I gazed—and
gazed =guardavo/fissavo).
The experience of the poet is not limited to the immediate pleasure
of intellectual delight in the scene observed. He realises the full
extent of the wealth the scene has given him in a spiritual way and it
stays with him always as an inspiration ( What wealth the show to

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils
Poichè quando mi stendo sul mio divano
apatico o di cattivo umore
loro brillano nella memoria
che è la felicità della solitudine
e così il mio cuore si riempie di piacere
e balla con i narcisi.
me had brought) .
The last stanza of the poem reveals that he is lying on a couch and
visualizing the daffodils, which brings him serenity and joy: For oft =
spesso.; when on my couch I lie= quando mi trovo sul mio divano; In
vacant = ozioso/distratto or in pensive= pensoso mood = stato
d’animo. In this stanza there is a tense shift from past to present. In
the first three stanzas the tense is the past and in the last stanza
there is the present. They= the daffodils, once again, flash upon that
inward (=interiore) eye/Which is the bliss (beatitudine) of solitude:
this kind of solitude is very different from the melancholy loneliness
described at the beginning of the poem.
In this condition the poet finds his heart dancing with joy, a joy
which revives the pleasure participated in when he observed the
dance of the daffodils in the breeze.

The solitary Reaper

“The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth is written as a recollection of an overwhelming emotional experience. It is about
the song sung by a Solitary Reaper. ‘The Solitary Reaper’ was singing and doing her work without minding about anyone. But,
the poet was observing her, mesmerized by the song. He compares her song to that of Nightingale and the Cuckoo-bird, yet he
states that her song is the best. Despite the poet’s inability to decipher the song’s meaning, he understands that it is a song of
melancholy. The poet listened motionlessly until he left the place, but the song never left him. Even after a long time, he has
come away from that place, he says, he could still listen. The song continued to echo in his heart long after it is heard no more.
The beautiful experience left a deep impact and gave him a long-lasting pleasure.

In this poem, he writes specifically about real human music encountered in a beloved, rustic setting. The song of the young girl
reaping in the fields is incomprehensible to him (a “Highland lass,” she is likely singing in Scots), and what he appreciates is its
tone, its expressive beauty, and the mood it creates within him, rather than its explicit content, at which he can only guess. To
an extent, then, this poem ponders the limitations of language, as it does in the third stanza (“Will no one tell me what she
sings?”). But what it really does is praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty, the “spontaneous overflow of
powerful feeling” that Wordsworth identified at the heart of poetry.
By placing this praise and this beauty in a rustic, natural setting, and by and by establishing as its source a simple rustic girl,
Wordsworth acts on the values of Lyrical Ballads. The poem’s structure is simple—the first stanza sets the scene, the second
offers two bird comparisons for the music, the third wonders about the content of the songs, and the fourth describes the
effect of the songs on the speaker—and its language is natural and unforced. Additionally, the final two lines of the poem (“Its
music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more”) return its focus to the familiar theme of memory, and the soothing
effect of beautiful memories on human thoughts and feelings.

In the First stanza of “The Solitary Reaper,”

Behold her, single in the field, Osservala, sola nel campo Wordsworth describes how the Reaper was singing
Yon solitary Highland Lass Quella solitaria Ragazza delle Highlands all alone. During one of his journeys in the
Reaping and singing by herself; Mietendo e cantando da sola; countryside of Scotland, he saw a Highland girl
Stop here, or gently pass! Fermati qui, o passa soavemente! working in the field all alone. She had no one to
Alone she cuts and binds the grain, Sola lei taglia e lega il grano, help her out in the field. So she was singing to
And sings a melancholy strain; E canta un canto melanconico, herself. She was singing without knowing that
O listen! for the Vale profound O ascolta! perchè la valle profonda someone was listening to her song. The poet
Is overflowing with the sound. Sta traboccando con il suono. (melodia) doesn’t want to disturb her solitude so requests
the passer by’s go without disturbing her. She was
immersed in her work of cutting and binding while
singing a melancholy song. For the poet, he is so
struck by the sad beauty of her song that the whole
valley seems to overflow with its sound.

In the second stanza of “The Solitary Reaper,” the

No Nightingale did ever chaunt Nessun usignolo mai cantò poet compares the young woman’s song with
10 More welcome notes to weary bands Più benvenute note a stanchi gruppi ‘Nightingale’ and ‘Cuckoo’ – the most celebrated
Of travellers in some shady haunt, Di viandanti in qualche oasi ombrosa birds by the writers and poets for the sweetness of
Among Arabian sands: Fra sabbie arabe: voice. But, here he complains that neither
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard Una voce così penetrante mai fu udita ‘Nightingale’ nor the ‘Cuckoo’ sang a song that is as
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, In primavera dall’uccello cuculo, sweet as hers. He says that no nightingale has sung
Breaking the silence of the seas Rompendo il silenzio dei mari the song so soothing like that for the weary
Among the farthest Hebrides Fra le remote Ebridi. travelers. For, the song of the girl has stopped him
from going about his business. He is utterly
enchanted that he says that her voice is so thrilling
and penetrable like that of the Cuckoo Bird, which
sings to break the silence in the ‘Hebrides’ Islands.
He symbolically puts forth that her voice is so
melodious and more than that of the two birds,
known for their voice.

In the third stanza of “The Solitary Reaper,” the

Will no one tell me what she sings? Nessuno mi dirà cosa canta? poet depicts his plight over not understanding the
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow verses Forse i melanconici versi fluiscono theme or language of the poem. The poet couldn’t
For old, unhappy, far-off things, Per vecchie, infelici, lontane cose, understand the local Scottish dialect in which the
 And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
E battaglie antiche:
O è qualche umile canzone,
Fatto familiare di oggi?
Qualche pena naturale (morte), perdita, o dolore,
Che è succeso, e può succedere ancora?
reaper was singing. So tries to imagine what the
song might be about. Given that it is a ‘plaintive
number’ and a ‘melancholy strain’ (as given in line
6) he speculates that her song might be about
some past sorrow, pain or loss ‘of old, unhappy
things‘ or battles fought long ago. Or perhaps, he
says, it is a humbler, simpler song about some
present sorrow, pain, or loss, a ‘matter of to-day.’
He further wonders if that is about something that
has happened in the past or something that has
reoccurred now.

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Qualunque (fosse) l’argomento, la ragazza cantava
Come se la sua canzone non potesse aver fine;
La vidi cantare mentre lavorava
E sopra la falce piegarsi; --
Io ascoltavo, immobile e fermo;
E mentre salivo su (per) la collina
La musica nel mio cuore portavo,
Molto tempo dopo che non fu più udita.
In the fourth stanza, the poet decides not to probe
further into the theme. He comes to the
conclusion that whatever may be the theme of her
poem, it is not going to end. Not only her song but
also her suffering sounds like a never-ending one.
He stays there motionless and listened to her song
quite some times. Even when he left and mounted
up the hill he could still hear her voice coming
amongst the produce, she was cutting and binding.
Though the poet left that place, the song remained
in his heart, long after he heard that song.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

Was born in Devonshire in 1772. At the age of ten, he was sent to Christ's Hospital School in London, and then he went to
Cambridge, where he never graduated. He was heavily influenced by French Revolutionary ideals, which made him an
enthusiastic republican. After the disillusionment with the French Revolution, he planned to establish a utopian community in
Pennsylvania under the name of "Pantisocracy', where every economic activity would be done communally and private
ownership would not exist, in order to provide labour and peace and create the best possible environment for everyone. In the
end this project failed.

In 1797 he met the poet William Wordsworth and an important collaboration started. Together they published the collection
Lyrical Ballads, which includes his masterpiece, the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written in 1798. The collection
became, along with the Preface to its second edition, the Manifesto of the English Romantic movement. Finally, he settled in
London, where he produced Biographia Literaria (1817), a classic text of literary criticism and autobiograph where he explained
the dual task which he and Wordsworth had set themselves in Lyrical Ballads. In contrast to Wordsworth’s preoccupation with
subjects of ordinary life, his own task was to write about extraordinary events in a credible way.

On Fancy and Imagination

Coleridge worked out a theory of Imagination of his own, which was different from Wordsworth’s one. According to
Coleridge, Fancy (or Fantasy) is just the mechanical and logical faculty that a poet uses to create similes, metaphors, rhyme
and all poetic devices.
Instead, the Imagination is divided into two different types: primary and secondary. The primary imagination is the faculty to
perceive the world around us and is common to all people. The secondary imagination is the ability that a poet has to re-create
images in a new ideal synthesis during a state of ecstasy. So, only poets possess the secondary imagination while everybody has
the primary imagination. (The poet was addicted to opium and his growing enslavement to opium coincided with his falling in
love with the sister of Wordsworth’s future wife; he left his wife for her)

Imagination was more important than fancy, which, though on a higher level than mere perception, was based on the power of
association of material already provided and subject to the rational law of judgement. A practical example is offered by what
Coleridge does in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; he uses several details that had impressed him during his readings, and he
shapes them into something else. Thus fancy enabled the poet to blend various 'ingredients' into beautiful images.

Coleridge's view of nature

Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge did not view nature as a moral guide or a source of consolation and happiness. His
contemplation of nature was always accompanied awareness of the presence of the ideal in the real. His strong Christian faith,
however, did not allow him to identify nature with the divine. Rather, he saw nature and the material world as the projection of
the 'real' world of ideas on the flux of time. Thus Coleridge believed that natural images carries abstract meanings and he used
them in a most visionary poems.

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

It is made up of seven parts and it is set on a boundless sea with days of pitiless sun and nights lit by the moon.
1. The ancient mariner stops a wedding guest to tell him his dreadful tale. He narrate show he and his fellow mariners
reached the equator and the Pole after a violent storm. After several days an albatross appeared through the fog and
was killed by the Mariner. The shooting of a bird may seem a matter of little moment, but Coleridge makes it significant
in 2 ways: he does not say why the Mariner kills the albatross, so what matters is the uncertainity of the Msriner’s
motives which suggests the irrationality of the crime. Then, this action is against nature and breaks a sacred law of life.

2. The Mariner suffers punishment for what he has done. The world which faces is dead and terrible; the ship has ceased
to move and the sailors are tortured by thirst and the only moving things are slimy creatures in the sea and the
deathfires which dance at night.

3. A phantom ship comes closer to the doomed crew and is identified as a skeleton ship. On board Death and Life in
Death seen as ghosts, cast dice; the former wins the Mariner’s fellows, who all die, and the latter wins the Mariner’s
life.

4. The sense of solitude is stressed and the guilty soul of the Mariner is cut off not merely from human intercourse but
also from nature. Then, the Mariner, unaware blesses the water snakes and begin to re-establish a relationship with
nature.

5. It continues the process of the soul’s revival. The ship beginsto move and celestial spirits stand by the corps of the dead
men.

6. The process of healing seems to be impeded.

7. The Mariner gains the wedding guest’s sympathy. Coleridge does not tell the end of the story, but lets the reader
suppose that the Mariner’s sense of guilt will end only with his death.

Summary

Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled old sailor. The young Wedding-
Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient
Mariner’s “glittering eye” and can do nothing but sit on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on
a ship out of his native harbor—”below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse top”—and into a sunny and cheerful sea.
Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that the bride has entered the
hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself from the Mariner’s story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a
giant storm rose up in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land “of mist and snow,” where
“ice, mast-high, came floating by”; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice.
The powerful storm and the dangerous beauty of the South Pole exhibit the essence of the Romantic ideal of the sublime.
The storm overpowers the ship and forces it to the Pole, where it meets potential peril from the ice. But the mist and snow
are also terrifyingly beautiful and majestic.But then the sailors encountered an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around
the ship, the ice cracked and split, and a wind from the south propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy stretch
of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner’s face,
and the Wedding-Guest asks him, “Why look’st thou so?” The Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with
his crossbow.

This unexplained killing sets in motion the cycle of sin and penance the Mariner must undergo. It is first and foremost a crime
against the natural world, and thus against God, for which the Mariner will never be fully absolved. Another way to view this
attack on the bird is as another failed attempt to assert the mundane over the sublime. With this idea comes the notion that by
killing the bird, the Mariner was fulfilling the constant human desire to interpret. The Albatross was once ethereal, natural and
supernatural, crossing boundaries and exhibiting qualities of both worlds, but by killing it the Mariner forces a singular
interpretation on it: dead. Nature and the supernatural world will then punish the Mariner for his sin and for his misguided
effort to interpret a bird that resists interpretation. (Also note that the Albatross is killed by a cross-bow—adding Christ-like
imagery to its death.)

At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird that made the breezes blow. But when the fog
lifted soon afterward, the sailors decided that the bird had actually brought not the breezes but the fog; they now
congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind pushed the ship into a silent sea where the sailors were quickly stranded; the
winds died down, and the ship was “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.” The ocean thickened, and the men had
no water to drink; as if the sea were rotting, slimy creatures crawled out of it and walked across the surface. At night, the water
burned green, blue, and white with death fire. Some of the sailors dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms deep, followed them
beneath the ship from the land of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight and hung the corpse of the
Albatross around his neck like a cross.
A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that they were unable to speak. But one day, gazing
westward, the Mariner saw a tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into a ship, moving toward them. Too dry-mouthed to speak
out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner bit down on his arm; sucking the blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough
to cry out, “A sail! a sail!” The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it was a ghostly,
skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a
pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and “thicks man’s blood with cold.” Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice,
and the woman won, whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to
instantly emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by one—all except the Mariner, whom
each sailor cursed “with his eye” before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies and rushed by the Mariner.

The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his skinny hand. The Mariner reassures the
Wedding-Guest that there is no need for dread; he was not among the men who died, and he is a living man, not a ghost. Alone
on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that
crawled across its surface. He tried to pray but was deterred by a “wicked whisper” that made his heart “as dry as dust.” He
closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who glared at him with the malice of their final curse. For
seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. At last the moon rose, casting the
great shadow of the ship across the waters; where the ship’s shadow touched the waters, they burned red. The great water
snakes moved through the silvery moonlight, glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and became
beautiful in the Mariner’s eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that moment, he found himself able to pray,
and the corpse of the Albatross fell from his neck, sinking “like lead into the sea.”

Form
Coleridge used an archaic language, connected to the old ballads, rich in alliterations, repetitions and onomatopoeias.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but, occasionally,
as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetrameter, while even lines are
generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four
accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an
ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though again there are many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes
AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an
internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

The atmosphere of the whole poem is mysterious because of the combination of the supernatural and the commonplace –
dream-like elements and visual realism. At times nature seems to be a character itself, based on the way it interacts with the
Ancient Mariner. When the Mariner kills the albatross, he offends the spirit of the nature. In fact, like all natural things, the
Albatross is linked to the spiritual world, and thus the Ancient Mariner's punishment through nature itself begins. The wind
dies, the sun becomes hotter and hotter, it does not rain. The ocean becomes revolting, rotten, peopled with 'slimy' creatures.
It is only at the end of the poem that the Ancient Mariner preaches respect for the natural world, because one must respect all
natural creatures in order to respect God.

Characters

The mariner ans hs fellow sailors are hardly characters in any dramatic sense. They are more types than human beings and their
agonies are simply universally human. The Mariner does not speak as a moral agent; he is passive in guilt and remorse. When he
acts, he does so blindly, under compulsion. From his paralysis of conscience the Mariner succeeds in gaining his authority,
though he pays for it by remaining in the condition of an outcast. Coleridge makes him spectator as well as actor in the drama,
so that he can tell even of his worst terrors with the calm of lucid retrospection.

The Rime and traditional ballads

This poem contains many of the features traditionally associated with ballads, that is: the combination of dialogue and
narration; the four-line stanza; archaic language, rich in alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia; the theme of travel and
wandering; and supernatural elements. However, the presence of a moral at the end makes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a
Romantic ballad.

Walter Scott 1771 – 1832

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, but as a small boy, to improve his health, he lived for some years with his grandparents on
their farm in the Scottish Border. As a child Scott listened a lot of stories about the past, especially about their experiences by
survivors of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The defeat of the army of Scottish Highland soldiers (under Charles Edward Stuart)
brought to an end not just the Jacobite cause but also the feudal power that the Highland chiefs had exercised over their clans.
As a witness of these social and cultural transformations, Scott acquired a sense of history, associated with a specific place, and a
sense of the past that is kept alive in the oral traditions of the present.
Scott's father was a lawyer and he himself was trained in the law, becoming in 1799 sheriff (local judge) of Selkirkshire, a Border
county, and in 1806 clerk of session in Edinburgh.
From early childhood Scott was an avid reader of ballads and poetic romances, which with his phenomenal memory he
effortlessly memorized. He began his literary career as a poet, first as a translator of German ballad imitations and then as a
writer of such imitations.
Scott then wrote lyric poems, which he inserted in his novels. Some of the lyrics are based on the folk ballad.
Waverley (1814), which deals with the Jacobite defeat in 1845, introduced a motif that would remain central to Scott's fiction:
the protagonist mediates between a heroic but violent old world that can no longer survive and an emerging new world that will
be both safer than the old one— ensuring the security of property and the rule of law—and duller, allowing few opportunities
for adventure.
Scott did not invent the historical novel, and indeed was readier than most twentiethcentury critics to acknowledge that he had
been influenced by the women novelists who dominated the literary scene prior to his debut, but his example established the
significance the form would henceforth claim.
Scott published all his novels anonymously, an index of how a gentleman-poet, even at the start of the nineteenth century,
might find fiction a disreputable occupation.

Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel set in late twelfth-century England, is first and foremost and adventure novel. Its
popularity and longevisty have secured it a place as one of the great historical romances of all the time.
Ivanhoe is set in England in the 1190s, over a century after the Norman Conquest which saw William the Conqueror seize the
English throne. A nobleman named Cedric, who is intent on restoring a Saxon to the throne, plans to wed Rowena, a beautiful
young woman who is his ward, to the Saxon Athelstane of Coningsburgh. There’s just one small problem: Rowena has fallen in
love with Cedric’s son, Wilfred of Ivanhoe. To get him out of the way so Rowena will marry Athelstane, Cedric banishes his own
son from the kingdom. Ivanhoe (as Wilfred is known, by his title) goes to fight alongside the King, Richard the Lionheart, in the
Crusades in the Holy Land.
At Cedric’s home of Rotherwood, a member of the Knights Templar, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, boasts of his skill in combat. A
‘palmer’ or pilgrim who is also a guest at dinner that evening tells the Templar that Ivanhoe could beat the knight in single
combat. The arrogant Sir Brian admits that Ivanhoe is a fearsome warrior (he has seen him fighting in the Crusades), but he says
that he will challenge Ivanhoe to combat when he is back in England.
Plot twist: the pilgrim is really Ivanhoe, in disguise. He was a guest at his father’s house but nobody recognised him as Ivanhoe,
son of the host!
An elderly Jewish man named Isaac turns up at Rotherwood, and Cedric reluctantly admits him into his home. The next day,
Isaac and the pilgrim leave Rotherwood together, bound for Sheffield. Having overheard the Templar, Sir Brian, planning with
several other men to mug Isaac (as a Jew in medieval England, it’s assumed he has lots of money), the pilgrim/Ivanhoe helps
Isaac to evade his would-be robbers and in gratitude, Isaac kits Ivanhoe out in armour for the forthcoming tournament at Ashby-
de-la-Zouch.
ivanhoe – disguised as the Disinherited Knight – takes part in the tournament, defeating Sir Brian Bois-Guilbert among others,
and as champion is asked to name the Queen of Love and Beauty. He chooses Rowena rather than a Norman noblewoman, and
the following day, in the main tournament, Ivanhoe once again faces Bois-Guilbert, both of them supported by a team of knights.
Bois-Guilbert looks set to win, until the mysterious Black Knight (who we’ll later discover is King Richard the Lionheart himself, in
disguise) comes to the aid of the ‘Disinherited Knight’.
When Ivanhoe removes his helmet, having won the day, he is weak from his injuries. Rowena recognises him, and sees her
beloved has returned to England. At this point, however, Cedric remains unaware that his son has returned. Smarting from his
defeat at the tournament, Bois-Guilbert and several other Norman knights, including Reginald Front de Boeuf, ambush Ivanhoe’s
party and take them to Front de Boeuf’s castle, Torquilstone. The other knight, Maurice de Bracy, wants to marry Rowena for
her royal blood (he has designs on the throne of England and thinks marrying her will help). Bois-Guilbert falls in love with the
imprisoned Rebecca, who rejects his advances and his request that she convert to Christianity so they can marry
At this point, having seen a very skilful archer named Locksley earlier in the novel (when his talent with a bow led to him winning
the archery competition), we meet Locksley and his band of followers again. Along with the trusty swineherd, Gurth, Locksley
and his men lead an attack on Torquilstone to rescue Ivanhoe and the others. They are joined by the Black Knight, whose true
identity is still hidden from them.
De Bracy is injured by the Black Knight, who tells him his real identity, and De Bracy escapes from the castle and goes to Prince
John, to tell him that his brother the King is back in the country. Prince John decides to send men to capture Richard and throw
him in prison.
Meanwhile, Bois-Guilbert has also escaped Torquilstone and takes Rebecca with him as his prisoner. The Grand Master of the
Knights Templar, seeing how a knight has fallen in love with a ‘Jewess’, is suspicious of Rebecca, and to save face, Bois-Guilbert
claims Rebecca is a sorceress who has put a spell on him. She is condemned to be burnt at the stake, but she invokes the right of
trial by combat to decide her fate.
Ivanhoe arrives and agrees to be her champion, fighting Bois-Guilbert, who dies of his wounds during the ensuing combat.
Rebecca, now free to go, leaves England with her father. Ivanhoe is pardoned by his father Cedric, after King Richard himself
(who now reveals his true identity to everyone) tells him to do so. Ivanhoe can now marry Rowena. Richard has already
pardoned Locksley – also known as Robin Hood – and his fellow outlaws for their wayward ways, since they have helped to
defend his kingdom against the treacherous Knights Templar (who are now pursued and executed).
Analisys
The novel is a colourful depiction of medieval England, featuring jousting tournaments, banquets, knights, kings, princes,
jesters, and even Robin Hood Ivanhoe is first and foremost an adventure novel. Its popularity and longevity have secured it a
place as one of the great historical romances of all time. The main goal of the novel is to entertain and excite its readers with a
tale of heroism set in the high Middle Ages. In addition to evoking the atmosphere of a vanished era, Ivanhoe's adventure story
makes some critical points about an important time in English history, the moment when King Richard the Lion-Hearted
returned to England after four years spent fighting in the Crusades and languishing in Austrian and German prisons. The novel's
main historical emphasis focuses on the tension between the Saxons and the Normans, the two peoples who inhabited
England. As a matter of course, the novel proposes Ivanhoe, the hero, as a possible resolution to those tensions--not because of
anything
Ivanhoe does, for he is weirdly inactive for an action hero (he spends more than half the novel on the sidelines with an injury),
but for what he is, a Saxon knight who is passionately loyal to King Richard, a Norman king.

Structurally, Ivanhoe is divided into three parts, each of them centering around a particular adventure or quest. The first part
involves Ivanhoe's return to England in disguise (disguise is a major motif throughout the novel) and centers around the great
jousting tournament held at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. The second part involves Sir Maurice de Bracy's kidnapping of Cedric's Saxon
party out of lust for Rowena and centers around the efforts of King Richard (in disguise, of course) and Robin Hood's (Lockley's)
merry men to free the prisoners. The third part involves Rebecca's captivity at the hands of the Templars and Sir Brian de Bois-
Guilbert, and centers around the trial-by-combat which is arranged to determine whether she will live or die.

Scott repeatedly highlights the Saxons’ status as a dispossessed people, whose defeat at the Battle of Hastings over a century
earlier has led to a rift in some parts of the kingdom between Normans and Saxons. In making his titular hero the son of a Saxon
lord, Scott casts the Normans into the role of villains, with Ivanhoe representing the authentic English hero. We might analyse
this friction between Norman invaders and Saxon natives as an Anglicised version of a similar conflict between English invaders
and native Scots, seen in many of Sir Walter Scott’s Scottish-set novels. But it’s worth noting that King Richard the Lionheart,
himself a Norman descended from that first conqueror, William I, fights alongside the Saxons and is presented as a good king.
Scott also problematises the idea of the Saxons as persecuted victims by including the two Jewish characters, Isaac and his
daughter Rebecca, the latter of whom is accused of witchcraft and condemned to die until the trial by combat – the finale of
Ivanhoe – saves her from the stake. What’s more, Ivanhoe is a decidedly Shakespearean novel, in many ways – a fact that many
Shakespeare scholars, such as Jonathan Bate in The Genius of Shakespeare, have remarked about Scott’s fiction more generally.
Sir Walter Scott clearly learned a great deal about writing historical fiction from reading, not earlier historical novels, but from
reading Shakespeare’s plays. Like Shakespeare in his history plays about the Wars of the Roses (although it’s worth noting that
Shakespeare also wrote a play, King John, set just after the historical setting of Ivanhoe), Scott is trying to create a historical
identity for England through writing about one of its most celebrated warrior-kings, Richard the Lionheart (who famously spent
less than six months of his ten-year reign in England, and almost certainly never disguised himself as a knight to fight alongside
Saxons in England), and one of its most enduring characters from legend, Robin Hood. Ivanhoe is also remarkably Shakespearean
in Scott’s use of supporting characters: opening the novel with Gurth the swineherd, rather than a king at court, would have
been a novel (pun intended) move for a historical novelist in 1819, and is in keeping with Shakespeare’s focus on the common
soldier in such plays as Henry V. Anyway, historical errors plague the book, and this his has led many contemporary critics,
especially fans of Scott's popular Waverly novels, to criticize the book. But it is crucial to remember that Ivanhoe, unlike the
Waverly books, is entirely a romance. It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of imagination than one of
research.

For a writer whose early novels were prized for their historical accuracy, Scott was remarkably loose with the facts when he
wrote Ivanhoe. Historical errors plague the book, and in many cases (as in the depiction of Isaac, presented as the stereotypical
literary Jew) the depictions reveal more about mores and attitudes when Scott wrote the book, in 1819, than when the story is
supposed to have happened, in around 1194. This has led many contemporary critics. But it is crucial to remember that Ivanhoe
is entirely a romance. It is meant to please, not to instruct, and is more an act of imagination than one of research. Despite this
fancifulness, however, Ivanhoe does make some prescient historical points. The novel is occasionally quite critical of King
Richard, who seems to love adventure more than he loves the well-being of his subjects. This criticism did not match the typical
idealized, romantic view of Richard the Lion-Hearted that was popular when Scott wrote the book, and yet it accurately echoes
the way King Richard is often judged by historians today.

Characters

Wilfred of Ivanhoe

Known as Ivanhoe. The son of Cedric; a Saxon knight who is deeply loyal to King Richard I. Ivanhoe was disinherited by his
father for following Richard to the Crusades, but he won great glory in the fighting and has been richly rewarded by the king.
Ivanhoe is in love with his father's ward, the beautiful Rowena. He represents the epitome of the knightly code of chivalry,
heroism, and honor.
King Richard I

The King of England and the head of the Norman royal line, the Plantagenets. He is known as "Richard the Lion-Hearted" for his
valor and courage in battle, and for his love of adventure. As king, Richard cares about his people, but he has a reckless
disposition and is something of a thrill-seeker. His courage and prowess are beyond reproach, but he comes under criticism--
even from his loyal knight Ivanhoe--for putting his love of adventure ahead of the well-being of his subjects.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775–1817) is acknowledged to be one of the great English novelists. She was born in 1775 in Steventon,
Hampshire, a small village in the southwest of England where her father was rector of the local church. The sixth of seven
children, she spent her short, uneventful life within the circle of her very close, affectionate family. Her lifelong, inseparable
companion was her sister Cassandra, who, like Jane, never married. She was educated at home by her father, and showed an
interest in literature and writing at a very early age. She had started writing at the age of twelve, for her family's amusement
and her own, and in 1797 began sending work to publishers in London. Her earliest writings date from 1787.

The debt to the 18th-century novel

Jane Austen owes much to the 18th-century novelist, from whom she learnt how to give insight into the psychology of
characters and the subtleties of ordinary events, like balls, walks, tea parties and visits to friends and neighbours. From Henry
Fielding in particular, she derived the omniscient narrator and the technique of bringing the character into existence through
dialogue. Her style was also characterised by the use of verbal and situational irony, rather than by open interpretation or
comment on the action. Unlike the Augustan writers, however, she restricted her view to the world of the country gentry
which she knew best.
She produced a large output of prose: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield
Park (1814), Emma (1816) and Persuasion. All her novels had been published anonymously; her identity was revealed by her
brother

Themes
The six novels are all, in Austen's words, "pictures of domestic life in country villages." The world they depict might seem
provincial and insular with such traditional values like: property, decorum, money and marriage.
Her real preoccupation was with people, the analysis of charcaters and conduct.
For the most part the working classes are absent or present only as silent servants; the soldiers and sailors who were protecting
England from Napoleon are presented mainly as welcome additions to a ball. Yet the novels also document with striking detail
how, within those country villages, competition for social status was becoming very strong. Through their heroines, readers can
see, as well, how hard the facts of economic life afflict gentlewomen during this period when a lady's security depended on her
making a good marriage.
Her work is amusing and deals with the serious matters of love, marriage and parenthood. The happy ending is a common
element: they all end in the marriage of hero and heroine.

The marriage
Jane Austen turned down a proposal of marriage in 1802, possibly intuiting how difficult it would be to combine authorship with
life as a wife, mother, and gentry hostess.
The traditional values of these families – such as property, decorum, money and marriage - provided the basis of the plots
and settings of her novels. Austen's novels take place in England, there is no Scotland, Wales or Ireland and not even the
industrial north of England. She writes about the oldest England, based on the possession of land, parks and country houses;
in her stories, people from different counties get married as a result of growing social mobility. The marriage market takes
place in London, Bath and some seaside resorts where people used to gather and carry out their business. It is in these places
that all the troubles of Austen's world occur: gossip, flirtations, seductions, adulteries. This happens because the marriage
market has also produced a range of villains: unscrupulous relatives, seducers and social climbers.

Love

Romantic love gives Jane Austen a focus from which individual values can achieve high definition, usually in conflict with
the social code that encourages marriages for money and social standing. Her treatment of love and sexual attraction is in
line with her general view that strong impulses and intensely emotional states should be regulated, controlled and
brought to order by private reflection – not in favour of some abstract standard of reason but to fulfil a social obligation.
The heroine's reflection after a crisis or climax is a common feature of the novels because understanding and coming to
terms with her private feelings allows her personal judgement to establish itself and secures her own moral autonomy.

Pride and Prejudice

During the eighteenth century, courtesy literature was a highly popular genre. They show the qualities, the formation and the
conduct which a gentleman/woman must possess. Chiefly aimed towards a female audience, the purpose of the manuals was
thus to function as a guide in their endeavours to become gentlewomen.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) was written at this time, when courtesy literature was very popular reading. The novel
focuses greatly on behaviour and. The dominant eighteenth-century ideology of femininity suggested a “natural association
between women and the private sphere, domesticity and leisure and the identification of women with feeling and sensibility
rather than reason”. It would be interesting to see how this is reflected upon the novel’s main female protagonist, Elizabeth
Bennet, who at first glance rather seems inclined to be more avantgarde as a character.

Accomplishments
Female education was a much contested issue. In the early years of the debate, only a modest number of the young bourgeois
women received some type of formal education. Arguments flourished claiming that women were in possession of a weaker
mind than men, which made them rather unfit to learn. It was instead perceived as enough for a woman to have the capacity to
govern her family and unconditionally obey her husband. So, education was not a matter to impose on the female mind.
The chief goal in a woman’s life at this time was to find a husband who could provide her with a home.
The main concern for women, as described in the many conduct manuals of the time, was therefore how to best be an object of
male desire. To best achieve this objective, it eventually became customary for most young women to receive some sort of
education. However, the teaching was very restricted, and young women were only taught what were regarded as attractive
female talents, which would help to improve a woman’s social usefulness in the domestic sphere. In practice, this meant training
in various ornamental accomplishments. These accomplishments included for instance, reading, dancing, music, drawing and
French.

A woman was also expected to learn to be virtuous. The prime virtues to display were temperance, chastity, modesty, pity and
compassion. To possess these was essential in order to become a fully accomplished gentlewoman. When Elizabeth dines with
Lady Catherine de Bourgh at Rosings, the latter asks if she plays or sings, to which Elizabeth replies that she does so a little. After
further questioning, Lady Catherine understands that Elizabeth’s accomplishments are not comprehensive, due to her
insufficient education and this fact appals her. Elizabeth, despite being brusquely put under public scrutiny by Lady Catherine,
retains a temperate and informs her that she and her sisters received a liberal education, which encouraged them to acquire the
knowledge they desired from reading books.
Elizabeth’s temperance in this scene depicts her as a virtuous young woman, self-possessed and self-control, as opposed to Lady
Catherine, whose indiscreet behaviour implies that she instead believes ornamental accomplishments to be of somewhat
greater importance than virtue.
Despite the fact that education for women became the norm in this period, the portrayal of the intellectual woman as an
unattractive individual was a dominant stereotype and a powerful image. It was argued that excessive education was seen to
have the power to distract women’s attention from their duties as virtuous wives, mothers and mistresses of the household.
Many well-educated women must therefore prepare themselves for a possible life of solitude.

Courtship
Finding a husband was a very important matter in a woman’s life in the eighteenth century.
Conduct manuals advocated behaviour that was intended to save a young woman from losing her honour when courted.
Chastity was the prime virtue that a woman could display when courted, because she should behave in a manner that showed
no signs of warm affection or physical urges towards her admirer. It was also preferable for her to display her modesty by
avoiding talking excessively.
The suitor, however, had to convince the young woman that he was worthy of her affection by expressing his sentiments
verbally or in letters. So, while the woman aimed at being recognised as virtuous, the man aspired to be able use his rhetorical
skills to present himself worthy as a suitor and future husband.
To escape the arduous existence that awaited a single woman, Elizabeth, as most women, relies on the financial support of a
future husband, as she does not come from a wealthy family. She encounters three men who are interested in her and with
whom she interacts.
When Mr. Collins asks her to marry him, he believes her only to be shy and to be behaving as was customary at that time. She
declines it several times to convince Mr Collins that she is not acting shy. By doing so, she displays an image of a woman who
does not wish to marry where there is not a basis of mutual love and affection, even though she, as the majority of the women
at this time, depended entirely upon the financial support of a husband.
The very rich Mr Darcy and Elizabeth meet at several social gatherings and what she notices about him is how he is mostly silent
and it is something that she perceives as arrogance on his behalf. Darcy is at this stage very fond of Elizabeth, but she does not
share the same feelings for him yet. He is very quiet, so she draws the conclusion that his silence must be due to his lack of
interest in her company and does not suspect that she actually is the reason for his frequent visits. Because of this, it takes her
by surprise when Darcy confesses his true feelings for her, as if it could not be true.
Darcy’s first marriage proposal to Elizabeth, subsequent to his declaration of his feelings for her, is received in a similar fashion
to Mr Collins’: it is rejected. The reason for her second discarding of an offer that would secure her with a future home is that
Darcy does not regard her feelings when asking for her hand. Instead, he speaks of how her social inferiority has made him try to
suppress his feelings for her, but that he now is forced to acknowledge the fact that he cannot manage to do so. The offer leaves
Elizabeth angry and insulted. He shows no consideration as to the fact that they do not share any feelings for each other from
previous courting. Somehow they continually meet by chance, and, eventually, Elizabeth discovers that she actually has
developed tender feelings for Darcy. This is, however, only after she notices a changed and more attentive behaviour on his
behalf. Whenever they meet in public she awaits his approach, rather than making any advances herself. She conceals her
emotions so well that even her own father is taken by surprise when she tells him about her love for Darcy. Luckily, Darcy is
courageous enough to finally admit to Elizabeth that his feelings for her and his desire to marry her have remained unchanged
since his proposal to her. Only then does she admit to having feelings for him too.
Mr Collins’ and Mr Darcy’s proposals both give emphasis to the fact that Elizabeth will reject even the wealthiest of men, if there
is no mutual love and admiration.
To her, the prospect of a happy marriage is based on mutual affection, esteem and respect and she does not seem prepared to
negotiate on these prerequisites; she chooses to decline any offer that is not based on these fundamentals. It can thus be argued
that she belongs to the less conventional view that emerged around the mid-eighteenth century that saw marriage as a union
based upon mutual feelings of love.

The themes in the novel

• The relationship between the individual and society: how could conflict between the individual's desires and
the individual's responsibility to society be resolved?
• The use that the individual makes of freedom and its consequences.
• The contrast between imagination and reason.
• Love, courtship and marriage.

Elizabeth and Darcy

The heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and the hero, Mr Darcy, have great qualities but also great weaknesses. They appear to have
been conceived and developed in critical antithesis to the conventional heroes and heroines of the sentimental novels of the
period. Darcy knows the principles of correct conduct, but is selfish and unsociable. Elizabeth has a lively mind, one of the
qualities that attracts Darcy to her; she is capable of complex impressions and ideas. She has a strong spirit of independence:
she refuses to take on the roles which her family or socially superior people try to impose on her. Both Elizabeth and Darcy set
out with an imperfect understanding of themselves and each other. She accuses him of pride and he accuses her of prejudice.
These accusations are partly just, but they also work in reverse: she is proud, and her blinds her to his virtues; he is prejudiced
by his upbringing and is disgusted by the vulgar behaviour of Elizabeth's mother and sisters.

Not simply a love story

The novel is not simply a love story because through Austen's irony it develops economic, sociological and philosophical themes.
There are elements of social realism, dealing with marriage as a means of social mobility of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy
during the era of the Napoleonic wars and at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The author seems interested in the
balance between the social and economic need of securing a marriage and the desire to follow idealism and feeling. Through
the character of Elizabeth, her romantic independence and individualism, Austen tells the struggle to find one's place within the
conservative social institution of marriage. The marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth reveals the characteristics that make a
marriage successful. Feeling cannot be brought on by appearances and must gradually develop between the two people as they
get to know each other. The message of the novel seems to be the search for a balance through the gradual change of the main
traits of the characters' personalities that will lead to a reconciliation of the themes that they represent.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 1788-1824

George Gordon Byron was handsome and unconventional; he descended from two aristocratic families and began to write at
Trinity Collge in Cambridge.
In 1809 he partecipated in a tour of Spain, Portugal, Malta, Greece and Middle East where he collected all the experiences that
originated the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. These cantos were so successful that he became a literary
celebrity.
Although he never considered himself a Romantic poet, Byron was the only English poet of his age who achieved an immense
European reputation. Through much of the nineteenth century he continued to be rated as one of the greatest of English poets
and the very prototype of literary Romanticism. His influence was manifested everywhere, among the major poets and
novelists (Balzac and Stendhal in France, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky in Russia, and Melville in America), painters (especially
Delacroix), and composers (including Beethoven and Berlioz).
Byron cultivated a skepticism about established systems of belief that, in its restlessness and defiance, expressed the
intellectual and social ferment of his era. Readers marveled over the intensity of the feelings his verse communicated.
He developed a particular character, called “The Byronic hero”. It first reached a very wide public in Byron's semi-
autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818). A Byronic hero can be conceptualized as an
extreme variation of the Romantic hero archetype. Traditional Romantic heroes tend to be defined by their rejection of
standard social conventions and norms of behavior, their alienation from larger society, their focus on the self as the center of
existence, and their ability to inspire others to commit acts of good and kindness. Romantic heroes are not idealized heroes,
but imperfect and often flawed individuals who, despite their sometimes less than savory personalities, often behave in a
heroic manner.
Lord Byron developed the archetype of the Byronic hero in response to his boredom with traditional and Romantic heroic
literary characters. Byron, according to critics and biographers, wanted to introduce a heroic archetype that would be not only
more appealing to readers but also more psychologically realistic.
The archetype of the Byronic hero is similar in many respects to the figure of the traditional Romantic hero. Both Romantic and
Byronic heroes tend to rebel against conventional modes of behavior and thought and possess personalities that are not
traditionally heroic. However, Byronic heroes usually have a greater degree of psychological and emotional complexity than
traditional Romantic heroes.
Byronic heroes are marked not only by their rejection of traditional heroic virtues and values but also to be passionate,
impulisive, cynic, moody, restless and mysterious men who hide some horrible sin or secret in their past. They are charcterized
by proud individualism and tend to appear larger than life and dress and style themselves in elaborate costumes for the
purpose of making themselves as different from others as possible.
The Byronic hero is isolated and attractive at the same time; he is of noble birth but wild and rough in his manners; he has a
great sensibility to nature and beauty, but has grown bored with the excess and excitements of the world. Women cannot resist
him, nut he refuses their love, men either admire or envy him.
The figure of the Byronic hero originates in a contradictory personality: Byron fiercely believed in individual liberty and hated
every constraint. He wanted all men to be free. He was and wanted to be isolated, so that he could denounce the evils of
society in his witty style.

Style:
He used a great variety of metres, ranging from the “ Spensieran stanza” (8 lines of 10 syllables plus 1 of 12) in Childe Harold to
the “ottava rima” (8 line stanza rhyming abababc) in Don Juan.
He was a brilliant conversationalist and a letter writer, so he displayed a strong interest in the colloquial language.
Byron's contemporaries insisted on identifying the author with his fictional characters, reading his writing as veiled
autobiography even when it dealt with supernatural themes. Byron's letters and the testimony of his friends show, however,
that his own temperament was in many respects opposite to that of his heroes. While he was passionate and willful, he was
also a witty conversationalist capable of taking an ironic attitude toward his own activities as well as those of others.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold is a travelogue narrated by a melancholy, passionate and very eloquent tourist.
The first 2 cantos are set in Spain, Portugal, Albania, and Greece. They evoke the glorious past and the famous monuments and
landscapes of these countries. The background to the 3rd canto is Central Europe (he made it after the breakup of his marriage).
Canto 4 describes Italy's great cities, in particular their ruins and museums and the stories about the glories of the Roman
Empire. It also contains descriptions of nature which reflects poet’s mood and feelings. Byron describes its wild aspects which
best suit the solitary and melancholy temper of his hero.
Byron chose for his poem the Spenserian stanza and he attempted in the first canto to imitate, in a seriocomic fashion, the
archaic language of his Elizabethan model. (Childe is the ancient term for a young noble awaiting knighthood.) But he soon
dropped the archaisms, and in the last two cantos he confidently adapts Spenser's mellifluous stanza to his own
autobiographical and polemical purposes.

P.B. Shelley 1792 – 1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley, born in Sussex in 1792, was the eldest son of a wealthy, conservative Member of Parliament, and heir
to a considerable fortune. In 1810 he was expelled from Oxford University because of his radical pamphlet The Necessity of
Atheism (1811), challenging the existence of God. He no longer had any financial support from his father.
Almost all works by Shelley show his restless spirit, his refusal of social conventions, political oppression, any form of tyranny,
and his faith in a better future. Less disciplined and methodical than Wordsworth or Coleridge, he remains nevertheless a
poet of great conviction and powerful musicality, and the author of some of the finest lyric poetry in English literature.
Shelley believed strongly in the principles of freedom and love, which he regarded as remedies for the faults and evils of
society. Through love, he believed man could overcome any political, moral or social convention.
The nature Shelley describes is not the real world of Wordsworth's poems, but a beautiful veil that hides the eternal truth of
the divine spirit. His approach to nature is also instrumental, since it provides him with images, such as the wind and the clouds
and symbols for the creation of his cosmic schemes. Finally, nature represents his favourite refuge from the disappointment
and injustice of the ordinary world, the interlocutor of his melancholy dreams and of his hopes for a better future.

The poet's task

The poet, for Shelley, is at the same time a prophet and a titan challenging the cosmos; his task is to help mankind to reach an
ideal world where freedom, love and beauty are delivered from their enemies, such as tyranny, destruction and alienation.

Pensiero
 [
Nonostante dichiari il suo aperto ateismo e il suo materialismo, Shelley è in realtà un panteista e un epicureo che sogna un Eden
pagano dove non esiste il peccato ma solo gioia e piacere (amori impetuosi, passioni brevi ma travolgenti segnarono il suo
percorso di "genio nordico dal cuore latino"); secondo il suo pensiero Dio è tutta la natura e il mondo stesso, l'uno e il tutto
riuniti nella memoria della specie.
Shelley è un poeta contraddittorio: nelle sue opere bisogna distinguere la poesia frutto di commozione eloquente da quella
composta di versi ideologici e talvolta retorici, a partire da quelli condizionati dalle sue posizioni a favore dell'amore libero e di
ogni trasgressione dei principi correnti, contro il lavoro organizzato in fabbrica, contro l'istituzione di una società mercantile e
colonialista.

Ode to the West Wind

"Ode to the West Wind" is an ode, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1819 in Cascine wood[1] near Florence. It was
originally published in 1820 in London as part of the collection Prometheus Unbound.
Perhaps more than anything else, Shelley wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes
the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure.
Shelley appended a note to the "Ode to the West Wind" : "This poem was written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence,
and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which
pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that
magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions."
The note is interesting in that it shows that the poem came out of a specific experience. The imagery of the poem suggests a
natural phenomenon that is observed while it is taking place. The fact that it was written near Florence, Dante's city, may explain
why Shelley used terza nina, the stanza of Dante's Divine Comedy. (Terza nina is a series of triplets with interlocking rhymes, aba,
bcb, cdc, etc.).
The speaker invokes the “wild West Wind” of autumn, which scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be
nurtured by the spring, and asks that the wind, a “destroyer and preserver,” hear him. The speaker calls the wind the “dirge / Of
the dying year,” and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again implores it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind
stirs the Mediterranean from “his summer dreams,” and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the “sapless foliage”
of the ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him.
The speaker says that if he were a dead leaf that the wind could bear, or a cloud it could carry, or a wave it could push, or even
if he were, as a boy, “the comrade” of the wind’s “wandering over heaven,” then he would never have needed to pray to the
wind and invoke its powers. He pleads with the wind to lift him “as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”—for though he is like the wind at
heart, untamable and proud—he is now chained and bowed with the weight of his hours upon the earth.
The speaker asks the wind to “make me thy lyre,” to be his own Spirit, and to drive his thoughts across the universe, “like
withered leaves, to quicken a new birth.” He asks the wind, by the incantation of this verse, to scatter his words among
mankind, to be the “trumpet of a prophecy.” Speaking both in regard to the season and in regard to the effect upon mankind
that he hopes his words to have, the speaker asks: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
In the fifth section, the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a metaphor for his own art, the
expressive capacity that drives “dead thoughts” like “withered leaves” over the universe, to “quicken a new birth”—that is, to
quicken the coming of the spring. Here the spring season is a metaphor for a “spring” of human consciousness, imagination,
liberty, or morality—all the things Shelley hoped his art could help to bring about in the human mind. Shelley asks the wind to
be his spirit, and in the same movement he makes it his metaphorical spirit, his poetic faculty, which will play him like a
musical instrument, the way the wind strums the leaves of the trees. The thematic implication is significant: whereas the older
generation of Romantic poets viewed nature as a source of truth and authentic experience, the younger generation largely
viewed nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience. In this poem, Shelley explicitly links nature with art by finding
powerful natural metaphors with which to express his ideas about the power, import, quality, and ultimate effect of aesthetic
expression.

Canto 1
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Vento selvaggio dell’Ovest, respiro della vita d’Autunno, tu che in invisibile
presenza, come spettri fugaci un incantatore, porti le foglie morte ,
In the opening stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker appeals to
the wild West Wind. The use of capital letters for “West” and “Wind”
immediately suggests that he is speaking to the Wind as though it were
a person. He calls the wind the “breath of Autumn’s being”, thereby
further personifying the wind and giving it the human quality of having
breath. He describes the wind as having “unseen presence” which
makes it seem as though he views the wind as a sort of god or spiritual
being. The last line of this stanza specifically refers to the wind as a
spiritual being that drives away death and ghosts

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, This stanza of Ode to the West Wind describes the dead Autumn leaves.
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, They are not described as colorful and beautiful, but rather as
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed a symbol of death and even disease. The speaker describes the deathly
colors “yellow” “black” and “pale”. Even “hectic red” reminds one of
gialle e nere e pallide e arrossate, appestate moltitudini: tu che conduci al loro blood and sickness. He describes the dead and dying leaves as
scuro letto invernale “Pestilence stricken multitudes”. This is not a peaceful nor beautiful
description of the fall leaves. Rather, the speaker seems to see the fall
leaves as a symbol of the dead, the sick, and the dying. The wind then

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
i semi alati, dove giacciono freddi e distesi come un cadavere ognuno nella
tomba, finché la tua sorella azzurra di primavera, soffierà
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
la sua chiarina sulla terra sognante e colmerà, (traendo dolci gemme a nutrirsi
come greggi nell’aria) di vivide tinte e colori il piano e la collina:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
selvaggio Spirito che muovi ovunque, distruttore e preservatore – ascolta, oh
ascolta!
Canto 2
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Tu sul qual corso, fra il tumultuare del ripido cielo, nuvole sciolte si sfanno come
marciscenti foglie scosse dagli arruffati rami di cielo e oceano,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
angeli di pioggia e folgore: dove son sparse sulla celeste superficie del tuo aereo
impeto come splendidi capelli irti sul capo
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
di qualche fiera Menade, dal vago liminare dell’orizzonte fino al sommo zenit, le
ciocche della bufera16 che si avvicina. Tu inno funebre
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
dell’anno che muore, al quale questa notte che viene sarà cupola in un vasto
sepolcro formata da tutta la sua forza congregata
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
di vapori, dalla cui solida atmosfera nera pioggia e fuoco e grandine scoppieranno
– oh, ascolta!
Canto 3
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Tu che svegliasti dai suoi sogni estivi
il blu Mediterraneo là dove giacque cullato dal fluire dei suoi limpidi rivi
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
accanto a una pomicea isola del golfo di Baïa e vide in sonno vecchi palazzi e torri
palpitare nel più intenso giorno dell’onda
comes along like a chariot and carries the leaves “to their dark wintry
bed”, which is clearly a symbol of a grave
The speaker continues the metaphor of the leaves as the dead by
explaining that the wind carries them and “winged seeds” to their
graves, “where they lie cold and low”. The then uses a simile to
compare each leaf to “a corpse within its grave”. But then, part way
through the second line, a shift occurs. The speakers says that each is
like a corpse “until” the wind comes through, taking away the dead, but
bringing new life. The use of the word “azure” or blue, to describe the
wind is in sharp contrast to the colors used to describe the leaves.
h this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker describes the wind
as something which drives away death, burying the dead, and bringing
new life. It brings “living hues” and “ordours” which are filled with new
life
Here, the speaker again appeals to the wind, calling it a “wild spirit”
and viewing it as a spiritual being who destroys and yet also preserves
life. He is asking this spirit to hear his pleas. He has not yet made a
specific request of the wind, but it is clear that he views it as a powerful
spiritual being which can hear him
Again, the speaker addresses the wind as a person, calling it the one
who will “loose clouds” and shake the leaves of the “boughs of Heaven
and Ocean”. This reads almost as a Psalm, as if the speaker is praising
the wind for its power.
Again, the speaker refers to the wind as a spiritual being more powerful
than angels, for the angels “of rain and lightening” are described as
being “spread on the blue surface” of the wind. He then describes
these angels as being “like the bright hair” on the head of an even
greater being.
In this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker compares the wind
to a “fierce Maenad” or the spiritual being that used to be found
around the Greek God, Dionysus. Remember, this is the being that was
also described as having hair like angels. Thus, the wind is described as
a being like a god, with angels for hair. These angels of rain and
lightening reveal that a storm is on the way.
The speaker then explains that the storm approaching is the impending
doom of the dying year. The use of ‘sepulcher’ is interesting too, since
this is refers to a small room/monument, in which a person is buried in,
typically Christian origin. To refer to something like this could suggest
that Shelley wants to trap and contain all of the power of nature inside
the tomb, for it to ‘burst’ open in stanza 5. As well as this, a sepulchre is
an isolating way of being buried, which could indicate Shelley wants to
move away from all his miseries and be finally at one with nature.
The speaker then describes the wind as the bringer of death. He has
already described it as the Destroyer. Here, he describes it as one who
brings “black rain and fire and hail..” Then, to end this Canto, the
speaker again appeals to the wind, begging that it would hear him.
To begin this Canto, the speaker describes the wind as having woken up
the Mediterranean sea from a whole summer of peaceful rest. The sea,
here, is also personified.
With this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker simply implies
that the sea was dreaming of the old days of palaces and towers, and
that he was “quivering” at the memory of an “intenser day”.
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
tutti coperti di muschio azzurro e fiori così gentili che l’animo vien meno a
immaginarli! Tu che al passaggio le distese forze d’Atlantico
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
fendi in abissi, mentre nell’imo fondo le gemme e i melmosi boschi che portano le
secche foglie d’oceano riconoscono
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
la tua voce e tosto grigi di paura e tremanti si spogliano – oh, ascolta!
Canto 4
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
S’io fossi una morta foglia che tu portare potessi, s’io fossi un’agile nube per
volare con te, un’onda a palpitare in tuo potere e dividere
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
di tua forza l’impulso, solo me libero di te. O incontrollabile! Se almeno fossi
come nella mia fanciullezza e potessi
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
del tuo vagare in cielo essere compagno come allora, quando vincere la tua
celeste corsa pareva cosa da poco – non avrei mai lottato
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
così con te in preghiera nel mio desolato bisogno. Oh, sollevami come un’onda
una foglia una nuvola! Io cado sulle spine della vita! sanguino!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud
Un oneroso peso d’ore ha incatenato e piegato uno troppo simile a te – indomito,
e agile, e altero
Canto 5
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Fammi tua voce, almeno com’è la foresta: che importa se le mie foglie cadono
come le sue! il tumulto delle tue possenti armonie
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
trarrà da entrambi un profondo tono autunnale dolce anche in tristezza. Sii tu,
The speaker continues to describe the sea’s dreams as being of slower
days, when everything was overgrown with blue “moss and flowers”.
Then, he hints that something is about to change when he mentions to
Atlantic’s “powers”.
The stanza of Ode to the West Wind is in reference to the sea’s reaction
to the power of the wind. At the first sign of the strong wind, the sea
seems to “cleave” into “chasms” and “grow grey with fear” as they
tremble at the power of the wind. Again, this stanza reflects a Psalm in
worship of a god so mighty that nature itself trembles in its sight.
Here, the speaker finally brings his attention to himself. He imagines
that he were a dead leaf which the wind might carry away, or a cloud
which the wind might blow. He thinks about what it would be like to be
a wave at the mercy of the power of the wind.
The speaker stands in awe of the wondrous strength of the wind. It
seems to act on “impulse” and its strength is “uncontrollable”. He then
mentions his own childhood.
Here, the speaker seems to wonder whether the wind has gotten
stronger since his childhood, or whether he has simply become weaker.
He thinks that when he was a boy, he may have been about to
“outstrip” the speed of the wind. And yet, his boyhood “seemed a
vision”, so distant, and so long ago. The speaker is clearly contrasting
the strength of the wind to his own weakness that has come upon him
as he has aged.
Here, the speaker finally comes to his request. Until now, he has been
asking the wind to hear him, but he has not made any specific requests.
Now, he compares himself to a man “in prayer in [his] sore need” and
he begs the wind to “lift [him] as a wave, a leaf, a cloud”. He longs to be
at the mercy of the wind, whatever may come of it. In the final line, he
refers to himself as one who is in the final stages of his life when he
says, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed”. Just like the wind swept
away the dead leaves of the Autumn, the speaker calls for the wind to
sweep him away, old and decaying as he is.
The speaker says that the weight of all of his years of life have bowed
him down, even though he was once like the wind, “tameless…swift,
and proud”.
Again, the speaker begs the wind to make him be at its mercy. He
wants to be like a lyre (or harp) played by the wind. He wants to be like
the dead leaves which fall to the ground when the wind blows
In this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker asks the wind to
come into him and make him alive. This is yet another reference to the
wind as a sort of god. In some religions, particularly the Christian
religion, there is the belief that to have new life, one must receive the
Holy Spirit into his bodily being. This is precisely what the speaker is
 Spirito fiero, il mio spirito! Sii tu me, o impetuoso!
asking the wind to do to him. He realizes that for this to happen, his old
self would be swept away. That is why he describes this as “sweet
though in sadness”. But he asks the spirit of the wind to be his own
spirit, and to be one with him.

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

The speaker asks the wind to “drive [his] dead thoughts over the
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
universe” so that even as he dies, others might take his thoughts and
And, by the incantation of this verse,
his ideas and give them “new birth”. He thinks that perhaps this might
Trascina i miei morti pensieri sull’universo come appassite foglie e affrettare
nuova vita! e per l’incantesimo di questo verso even happen with the very words he is speaking now.

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth he speaker asks the wind to scatter his thoughts as “ashes and sparks”
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! that his words might kindle a fire among mankind, and perhaps awaken
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth the sleeping earth.

spargi, come da inestinto focolare ceneri e faville, le mie parole sull’umanità! Sii
attraverso il mio labbro alla dormiente terra
e trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
araldo d’una profezia! O Vento, se Inverno viene, può Primavera essere molto
lontana
The speaker has used spiritual and biblical references throughout Ode
to the West Wind to personify the wind as a god, but here he makes it a
little more specific. When he says, “The trumpet of prophecy” he is
specifically referring to the end of the world as the Bible describes it.
When the trumpet of prophecy is blown, Christ is believed to return to
earth to judge the inhabitants. The speaker asks the Wind to blow that
trumpet. Because of the speaker’s tone throughout Ode to the West
Wind, it would make sense if this was the speaker’s own personal
trumpet, marking the end of his life. He wants the wind to blow this
trumpet. With the last two lines of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker
reveals why he has begged the wind to take him away in death. He
says, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” This reveals his hope
that there is an afterlife for him. He desperately hopes that he might
leave behind his dying body and enter into a new life after his death.

A defence of Poetry
In this essay Shelley argues that there are two modes of human understanding: the rational and the imaginative. Of the two,
he claims imagination has the greater value, as it is imagination and the ability to see connections beyond the rational that
allow for empathy and moral growth. Shelley believes it is human nature to draw parallels and find harmonies in the world and
that this connection of unconnected things is at the heart of all art and exists in its purest form as poetry.
Rather than imagining a decline from a golden age, Shelley recounts a history of poetry in which poets (a term he uses loosely to
mean anyone with an excess of imaginative power that inspires them to make art or innovate, including prophets and great
leaders) build upon each other, each coming closer to moral perfection as they incorporate the new understandings of their own
time periods. At the same time, the enduring poets transcend their era. Later audiences are able to look back and not only
appreciate the universal beauty and human truth of a great work but, in some ways, understand it better than contemporary
works because they have the benefit of all the accumulated lessons of history. Shelley argues that reason alone, without a poetic
imagination, has done more to enslave humanity and exacerbate their inequality than to lift and liberate them. He contends that
only the sympathy aroused by art and imagination has the power to morally better humanity and to inspire better systems for
the future. This is the reasoning for his claim that ends the essay: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
In 1820, Thomas Love Peacock published an article entitled "The Four Ages of Poetry," wherein he divided the history of English
poetry into four historical categories: an "iron age" of primitive sentimentality but little technical skill; a "golden age," which
included Shakespeare and wedded technical prowess with the vitality of the iron age; a "silver age" of derivative but decent
poetry; and a "bronze age" or "second childhood of poetry" comprised of the Romantic poets, who secluded themselves from
real-world concerns, looked backward in time, and rejected rationalism. Peacock argued that as societies advanced, they
necessarily favoured reason over poetry and that as a consequence modern poets were inferior. Shelley was incensed by the
article and composed his own essay as a retort: "A Defense of Poetry."
Shelley's argument relies heavily on the way he defines his terms. He gives two ways of thinking about the world: reason and
imagination. He defines a poet as anyone who possesses an abundance of imagination and an ability to make connections that
are not rationally apparent. By poetry in this essay, Shelley means not only all art, but also several things the modern reader
might not think of as art per se. Among his historical poets, Shelley lists King Solomon, Jesus, and the philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. When he defends poetry, he is speaking less about the art form in terms of rhyme and meter and more in terms of
people's ability to sympathize, to imagine themselves in other people's positions, and to imagine themselves as better than they
are.
One of the key traits of the Romantic movement is a rejection of the rationalism that characterized the Enlightenment period.
For Shelley, universal truth is not something that can be arrived at through rational inquiry, but must be felt in a deeper and
more profound sense through one's emotions. Understanding this position is key to understanding Shelley's preference for
imagination over reason in terms of creating a better world.
Sympathy is key to Shelley's understanding of the usefulness of art. He argues that reason does not produce sympathy in the
human mind, and he points to the extreme and increasing inequality that has come about during the period of the
Enlightenment, which he argues saw great advances in reason but fewer in art and morals. He argues that it is relatively easy to
imagine how the world would be different without the best of the rational philosophers: some nonsense would have persisted
longer, but because reason deals in what is real and comprehensible, all of their discoveries and insights would have occurred to
someone sooner or later. Shelley argues that poets, by contrast, are each individual and that their impact on the human mind is
both so profound and so subtle that he cannot comprehend how different the world would look if there had been no Homer and
no Shakespeare. It would be, he proposes, a crueler world, where people had less confidence and less ambition to greatness.

John Keats 1795 – 1821

John Keats (1795–1821) is perhaps the greatest member of that group of the second generation of Romantic poets who
blossomed early and died young. He is Romantic in his relish of sensation, his feeling for the Middle Ages, his love for the Greek
civilisation and his concept of the writer, but the synthesis he made of all these elements was very much his own.
Keats was born in London in 1795 to a humble but well-off family. The first of five children, he attended a private school. He
decided to study to become a surgeon in 1810. Six years later, in spite of precarious finances, he gave up medicine for
poetry. In the same year Keats made friends with the poet and critic Leigh Hunt and with the painter Robert Haydon. They
eventually took him to see the famous Elgin Marbles, the sculptures brought to England by Lord Elgin from the Acropolis in
Athens and kept in the British Museum. Greek plastic art enchanted him and deeply influenced his future poetry.
Leigh Hunt edited a magazine, “The Examiner”, liberal in politics and romantic in literature, whose adversary was the Tory
“Blackwood's Magazine”. It was with the support of Hunt and then of Shelley that Keats published his first poems, which,
however, did not make any money.
In 1818 Keats fell deeply in love with Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote some of the most beautiful and passionate love
letters in English literature, but whom he was unfortunately unable to marry because of his illness (tubercolosis) and
professional setbacks. The following year, 1819, was his "annus mirabilis", when he composed almost all of his greatest
poems. But after a year of great creative activity, his health gave way. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery In Rome.

The role of imagination

It was Keats's belief in the supreme value of imagination which made him a Romantic poet. His imagination takes two main
forms: firstly, the world of his poetry is predominantly artificial, one that he imagines; secondly, his poetry comes from
imagination in the sense that a great deal of his work, even of the odes, is a vision of what he would like human life to be like
stimulated by his own experiences of pain and misery.
Beauty and art
What strikes his imagination most is beauty, and it is his disinterested love for it that differentiates him from the other
Romantic writers and makes him the forerunner of Victorian writers. His first apprehension of beauty proceeds from the
senses, from concrete physical sensations. All the senses, not on the nobler ones, sight and hearing, as in Wordsworth's poetry,
are involved in this process. This 'physical beauty' is caught in all the forms nature acquires, in the colours it displays, in the
sweetness of its perfumes, in the curves of a flower, in a woman. Beauty can also produce a much deeper experience of joy,
which introduces a sort of 'spiritual beauty', that is one of love, friendship and poetry These two kinds of beauty are closely
linked, since the former linked to life, enjoyment, decay and death – is the expression of the latter, which is related to eternity.
Moreover, Keats identifies beauty and truth as the only true types of knowledge.

Negative capability
The poet, in Keats's view, has what he called 'negative capability’, negativity refers to the capability the poet has to deny his
certainties and in order to identify himself with the object which is the source of his inspiration and the place where truth
resides. When the poet can rely on this negative capability, he is able to seek sensation, which is the basis of knowledge since
it leads to beauty and truth, and allows him to render it through poetry.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats is perhaps most famous for his odes such as this one, Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Themes
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” portrays his attempt to engage with the beauty of art and nature, addressing a piece of pottery from
ancient Greece, the static immobility of sculpture. The Grecian urn, passed down through countless centuries to the time of the
speaker’s viewing, exists outside of time in the human sense—it does not age, it does not die. They do not have to confront
aging and death (their love is “for ever young”), but neither can they have experience (the youth can never kiss the maiden; the
figures in the procession can never return to their homes).
The speaker attempts three times to engage with scenes carved into the urn; each time he asks different questions of it. In
the first stanza, he examines the picture of the “mad pursuit” and wonders what actual story lies behind the picture: “What
men or gods are these? What maidens loth?” Of course, the urn can never tell him the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of
the stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced to abandon this line of questioning.
The final two lines, in which the speaker imagines the urn speaking its message to mankind— ”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”
have proved among the most difficult to interpret in the Keats canon. After the urn utters the enigmatic phrase “Beauty is
truth, truth beauty,” no one can say for sure who “speaks” the conclusion.

The urn itself is ancient. It’s been passed down over the millennia to finally reach Keats’s presence and, to him, seems to exist
outside of the traditional sense of time. Ageless, immortal, it’s almost alien in its distance from the current age. This allows the
poet (or at least, the speaker in the poem) to mull over the strange idea of the human figures carved into the urn. They’re
paradoxical figures, free from the constraints and influences of time but at the same time, imprisoned in an exact moment.
Like other entries in Keats’s series of odes, Ode on a Grecian Urn builds on a specific structure.
Split into five verses (stanzas) of ten lines each, and making use of fairly rigid iambic pentameter, Ode on a Grecian Urn is very
carefully put together.
The rhyme scheme is split into two parts, with the final three lines of each stanza varying slightly. For the first seven lines, a
rhyme scheme of ABABCDE is used, though the instance of the CDE part is not always as strict. In verse one, the final three lines
are DCE; in the second verse, they’re CED; stanzas three and four both use CDE, while the fifth and final stanza uses DCE. This
gives the piece a ponderous feel, adding a sense of deliberation to the final lines of each verse while still adhering to the form.
Just like in his other odes, the splitting of the verses into rhymes of four lines and six lines creates a distinct sense of there being
two parts to each verse. As it is, this typically means that the first four lines (ABAB) are used to set out the verse’s subject, while
the final six lines mull over what it means.

In the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He is preoccupied with its depiction of
pictures frozen in time. It is the “still unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He also
describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what
legend they depict and from where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of
women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels?
What wild ecstasy?”

In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his
lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because
they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should
not grieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers and feels happy
that they will never shed their leaves. He is happy for the piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy that the love
of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes,
leaving behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be
sacrificed. He wonders where they are going and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its
citizens, and tells it that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it, frozen on the urn, will never return.
In the final stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of thought.” He
thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is
truth, truth beauty.”

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, During this first verse, we see the narrator announcing that he is
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, standing before a very old urn from Greece. The urn becomes the
subject of Ode on a Grecian Urn, so all of the ideas and thoughts are
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express addressed towards it. On the urn, we are told there are images of
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: people who have been frozen in place for all of time, as the “foster-
child of silence and slow time.”
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape The narrator also explains to us that he is discussing the matter in his
Of deities or mortals, or of both, role as a “historian” and that he’s wondering just what legend or story
the figures stuck on the side of the pottery are trying to convey. One
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
such picture, seemingly showing a gang of men as they chase some
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? women, is described as a “mad pursuit” but the narrator wants to know
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? more about the “struggle to escape” or the “wild ecstasy.”
The juxtaposition between these two ideas gives an insight into how he
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? is projecting different narratives onto one scene, unsure of which one is
Tu della quiete ancora inviolata sposa, true.
alunna del silenzio e del tempo tardivo,
narratrice silvestre che un racconto
fiorito puoi così più che la nostra
rima dolcemente dire,
quale leggenda adorna d’aeree fronde si posa
intorno alla tua forma?
Di deità, di mortali o pur d’entrambi,
in Tempi o nelle valli
d’Arcadia? Quali uomini
son questi o quali dei,
quali ritrose vergini,
qual folle inseguimento, qual paura,
quali zampogne e timpani,
quale selvaggia estasi?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

During the second verse, the reader is introduced to another image on
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; the Grecian urn. In this scene, a young man is sat with a lover,
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, seemingly playing a song on a pipe as they are surrounded by trees.
Again, the narrator’s interest is piqued, but he decides that the
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: “melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” Unaffected by
growing old or changing fashions, the notes the narrator imagines the
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave man playing offer unlimited potential for beauty. While the figures will
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; never grow old, the music also contains an immortal quality, one much
“sweeter” than regular music. The narrator comforts the man, who he
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
acknowledges will never be able to kiss his companion, with the fact
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; that she will never lose her beauty as she is frozen in time.
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Dolci le udite melodie: più dolci le non udite.
Dunque voi seguite, tenere cornamuse, il vostro canto, non al facile senso,ma, più
cari, silenziosi concenti date all’intimo cuore.
Giovine bello, alla fresca ombra mai può il tuo canto languire, né a quei rami venir
meno la fronda.
Audace amante e vittorioso, mai mai tu potrai baciare, pur prossimo alla meta, e
tuttavia non darti affanno: ella non può sfiorire e, pur mai pago, quella per
sempre tu amerai, bella per sempre.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed The third stanza again focuses on the same two lovers but turns its
attention to the rest of the scene. The trees behind the pipe player will
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; never grow old and their leaves will never fall, an idea which pleases
And, happy melodist, unwearied, the narrator. Just like the leaves, the love shared between the two is
equally as immortal and won’t have the chance to grow old and stale.
For ever piping songs for ever new; Normal love between humans can languish into a “breathing human
More happy love! more happy, happy love! passion” and becomes a “burning forehead and a parching tongue,” a
problem that the young lovers will not face.
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
In attempting to identify with the couple and their scene, the narrator
For ever panting, and for ever young; reveals that he covets their ability to escape from the temporary nature
All breathing human passion far above, of life. The piper’s song remains new forever while his lover remains
young and beautiful. This love, he believes, is “far above” the standard
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, human bond which can grow tired and weary. The parched tongue he
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. references seems to indicate that he’s worried about the flame of
O fortunate piante cui non tocca perder le belle foglie, né, meste, dire addio alla
passion diminishing as time passes, something that won’t worry the
primavera; young couple. On viewing the figures, the narrator is reminded of the
te felice, cantore non mai stanco di sempre ritrovare canti per sempre nuovi; inevitability of his own diminishing passions and regrets that he doesn’t
ma, più felice Amore! have the same chance at immortality as the two figures on the urn.
fervido e sempre da godere, e giovane e anelante sempre, tu che di tanto eccedi
ogni vivente passione umana, che in cuore un solitario dolore lascia, e sdegno:
amara febbre.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? The fourth stanza of Ode on a Grecian Urn Ode on a Grecian Urnreally
begins to develop the ideas. Turning to another image on the urn, this
To what green altar, O mysterious priest, time a group of people bringing a cow to be sacrificed, the narrator
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, begins to wonder about the individuals’ lives. We also see the speaker
in Ode on a Grecian Urn attempt to think about the people on the urn
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? as though they were functioning in regular time. This means that he
What little town by river or sea shore, imagines them to have had a starting point – the “little town” – and an
end point – the “green altar.” In turn, he imagines the “little town” they
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
come from, now deserted because its inhabitants are frozen in the
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? image on the side of the urn “for evermore.” This hints at what he sees
And, little town, thy streets for evermore as the limitations of the static piece of art, in that the viewer can never
discern the human motivations of the people, the “real story” that
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell makes them interesting as people.
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. The narrator’s attempts to engage with the figures on the urn do
Chi son questi che vengono per il sacrificio?
change. Here, his curiosity from the first stanza evolves into deeper
E, misterioso sacerdote, a quale verde altare conduci questa, che mugghia ai cieli, kind of identification with the young lovers, before thinking of the town
mite giovenca di ghirlande adorna i bei fianchi di seta? and community as a whole in the fourth. Each time, the reach of his
Qual piccola città, presso del fiume o in riva al mare costruita, o sopra il monte, empathy expands from one figure, to two, and then to a whole town.
fra le sue placide mura, si è vuotata di questa folla festante, in questo pio But once he encounters the idea of an empty town, there’s little else to
mattino? say. This is the limit of the urn as a piece of art, as it’s not able to
Tu, piccola città, quelle tue strade sempre saranno silenziose e mai non un’anima
provide him with any more information
tornerà che dica perché sei desolata.

he final stanza is perhaps the most famous piece of poetry Keats ever
wrote. This time, he is talking directly to the urn itself, which he
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede believes “doth tease us out of thought.” Even after everyone has died,
Of marble men and maidens overwrought, the urn will remain, still providing hints at humanity but no real
With forest branches and the trodden weed; answers. This is where we come to the conclusions he draws. There is a
sense that the narrator finds the lack of change imposed upon the
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought figures to be overwhelming. The urn teases him with its immortal
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! existence, feeding off the “hungry generations” (a line from Ode to a
When old age shall this generation waste, Nightingale) and their intrigue without ever really providing answers.
The urn is almost its own little world, living by its own rules. While it
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe might be interesting and intriguing, it will never be mortal. It’s a purely
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, aesthetic piece of art, something the speaker finds to be unsatisfying
when compared to the richness of everyday human life.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
The last lines in the piece have become incredibly well known. They can
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” be read as an attempt to sum up the entire through process of Ode
on a Grecian Urn in one couplet. ”Beauty is truth, truth beauty” as an
idea has proved very difficult to dissect, however, due to its
O pura attica forma! Leggiadro atteggiamento, cui d’uomini e fanciulle e rami ed
erbe calpestate intorno fregio di marmo chiude, mysteriousness. It’s unclear whether the sentiment is spoken by the
invano invano il pensier nostro ardendo fino a te si consuma, narrator, the urn, or by Keats himself, thanks to the enigmatic use of
pari all’eternità, fredda, silente, imperturbabile effige. quotation marks. The source of the speech matters. If it’s the narrator,
Quando, dal tempo devastata e vinta, questa or viva progenie anche cadrà, fra then it could mean that he has become aware of the limitations of such
diverso dolore, amica all’uomo, a static piece of artwork. If it’s the urn, then the idea that one piece of
rimarrai tu sola,
art (or self-contained phrase) could encompass humanity in any kind of
“Bellezza è Verità” dicendo ancora:
complete fashion is nonsensical, and the line deliberately plays off this.
“Verità è Bellezza”. Questo a voi, sopra la terra, di sapere è dato:
questo, non altro, a voi, sopra la terra, There’s a futility to trying to sum up the true nature of beauty in just
é bastante sapere. twenty syllables, a fact which might actually be the point of the
couplet. Thanks to the dense, complicated nature of the final two lines,
the opening remains open to interpretation.

La Belle Dam sans Merci: A Ballad

La Belle Dame Sans Merci was written in the summer of 1819, in Wentworth Palace, the home of his friend Charles
Armitage Brown. At this point, Keats was already aware that he would die, likely from tuberculosis, which had killed
his brother earlier on in his life. Their neighbours at Wentworth Palace were Fanny Brawne and her mother, and
because they lived in the other half of Wentworth Palace, they saw each other daily. After a while, Keats fell in love
with Fanny Brawne, though being poor, he could not marry her.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci is Keats’ life and emotions set into verse. It is a story of unrequited love, illness, and the
impossibility of being with whom one cares for when they are from different social classes.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child, lei,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
Che cosa ti tormenta, armati cavaliere
Che indugi solo e pallido?
Di già appassite sono le cipree del lago
E non cantan gli uccellini
Che cosa ti tormenta, armato cavaliere
Così stanco e desolato?
riempito è di già il granaio dello scoiattolo
Il raccolto è pronto
Vedo sul tuo cimitero un bianco giglio
umida angoscia e del pianto la febbre
sulle tue gote ove il color di rosa è sparito
troppo rapidamente
Una signora in quei prati incontrai
tutta la bellezza di una figlia delle fate aveva
capelli assai lunghi e leggeri i suoi piedi
e selavaggi i suoi occhi
Feci una ghirlanda per il suo capo
e anche bracciali e una cintura profumata
lei mi guardò come se mi amasse
e gemette dolcemente
Rimasi con lei sul cavallo al passo
e non vidi nessun’altro quell giorno
seduta di traverso cantava
un canto delle fate
Lei mi diede grate radici
del miele della manna
e nella sua lingua per me straniera mi disse
“Ti amo davvero”
Nella grotto degli elfi mi condusse
e lì lei pianse e sospirò con tristezza
ma i suoi occhi selvaggi io tenni chiusi
con quattro baci
Ivi lei mi cullò sino a dormire
e lì sognai : sia maledetto!
l’ultimo sogno fantasticato lì sul declivio
del freddo colle
Vidi pallidi re e pallid principi
scialbi guerrieri smunti color morte
gridavano: “ la bella dama non ha compassione
ti ha reso schiavo”
Le loro labbra livide scorsi nella penombra
e mi avvertivano
io mi svegliai e mi ritrovai qui
The first three stanzas introduce the character of the
Unidentified Speaker, and the knight. The
Unidentified Speaker comes across the knight
wandering around in the dead of winter – the sedge
has withered from the lake / and no birds sing. – in a
barren, bleak landscape. The cold has chased away
the birds, and yet the Unidentified Speaker notices
that the Knight is suffering from a fever. During the
summer of 1818, Keats’ younger brother Tom
succumbed to tuberculosis. In the very same year,
Keats began exhibiting symptoms of the disease, and
thus impending death was heavy on his mind
In Stanzas 4-9, the Knight responds to the
Unidentified Speaker, telling him how he met a lady
in the meadows – ‘full beautiful, a faery’s child‘. It is
important to point out the traditional form of this
poem: Keats wrote this in the style of a ballad, an
outdated form of poetry that capitalizes on simple
language and imagery to bring across its story. By
utilizing the ballad form, it lends the poem an air of
timelessness, and of an almost novelistic approach to
imagery. Even the story itself is evocative of the
ballad tradition. Ballads were used as entertainment,
and their length was supposed to keep listeners
engaged, as the ballad was a form of oral poetry.
Here, Keats’ language sweetens. The first three
stanzas of La Belle Dame Sans Merci were bitter and
devoid of emotion, but the introduction of the Lady
in the Meads produces softness in the language of
the Knight. He reminisces on the Lady’s beauty and
on her apparent innocence – her hair was long, her
foot was light, and her eyes were wild – and on her
otherworldliness, as well.
The reference to ‘language strange’ is yet another
evidence of the Lady’s unnatural lineage.
The Knight talks about his sweet memories of the
Lady: feeding each other, making the Lady presents,
travelling with her, and being together.
With the introduction of the eight stanza, the Lady
weeps for she knows that they cannot be together –
she is a fairy, and he is a mortal – and lulls him to a
sleep out of which he does not immediately wake.
Scholars are divided on the precise motives of the
Lady: while classes of scholars believe that the Lady’s
weeping in the Elfin grot does bring up the ideas of
undivided love, there are several scholars who
believe otherwise. For the purposes of this analysis, I
would say that it is the latter: the Lady understands
that they cannot be together, and chooses to leave
him to sleep.
In his dream, the Knight sees pale people – kings,
princes, and warriors – who tell him that he has been
enthralled by the Woman without Merci (La Belle
Dame Sans Merci). The Knight wakes up from the
nightmare alone, on the cold hill side. He tells the
Unidentified Speaker that that is why he stays there:
wandering, looking for the Lady in the Meads.
Although the language used is simple, Keats manages
 On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
in questo freddo colle
Questo è accaduto perchè io rimasi qui
Solo senza scopo
E nonostante le cipree fossero appassite
E gli uccelli non cantassero
to create two parallel universes: the real world,
where the Knight is found alone, and palely loitering, is
dark and dismal and wintery. The other world, where the
Lady lives, seems exotic and beautiful, with such glorious
foods as honey wild and manna-dew. The nightmarish
imagery that exists between the worlds can be taken to be
part and parcel of the Lady’s world, as it is she who whisks
young men away
– willing or unwilling – to their doom. The end of the
stanza leaves the fate of the Knight ambiguous.

Letter to Richard Woodhouse

Keats wrote several letters to relatives and friends during his brief lifetime: most of them are a precious source of
information not only about his life, but, more consistently, about his aesthetic and literary ideals.

In this particular letter the author goes deep into the analysis of some points that he considered to be of the
greatest importance: what is the role of the poet? What is his relationship with poetry itself and its subject-matter,
i.e. beauty? Are there any different attitudes towards these questions?The intensity with which these crucial points
are put at the stake leaves the impression that they were deeply felt and discussed among the poet and his
acquaintances.

October 27th, 1818

My dear Woodhouse,
Your Letter gave me a great satisfaction; more on account of its friendliness, than any relish of that matter in it which is
accounted so acceptable in the 'genus irritabile'. The best answer I can give you is in a clerk-like manner to make some
observations on two principle points, which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con, about
genius, and views and achievements and ambition and cetera. 1st. As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of
which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is
a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it
enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much
delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no
harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in
speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for -
and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are
poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most
unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I
would write no more? Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the Characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a
wretched thing to confess; but is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion
growing out of my identical nature - how can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with People if I ever am
free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one
in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; it would be the
same in a Nursery of children: I know not whether I make myself wholly understood: I hope enough so to let you see
that no despondence is to be placed on what I said that day.
In the second place I will speak of my views, and of the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some
good: if I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years - in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a
summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of Poems to come brings the
blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs - that the solitary
indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not
think it will - I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my
night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps not
speaking from myself: but from some character in whose soul I now live. I am sure however that this next sentence is
from myself. I feel your anxiety, good opinion and friendliness in the highest degree, and am
Your's most sincerely
John Keats

In his letter of October 27, 1818, to Richard Woodhouse, a friend and supporter, Keats offers one of his earliest
attempts to define what a poet is. Keats begins by declaring that a poet has no self or identity. A poet, like a chameleon,
absorbs the colorations of the outside world, becoming one with the things seen, heard, and touched. Keats’s point is
that, for poets to comprehend their subjects fully, to enter into the life of things around them, they must free
themselves from their own limited experiences of the world and merge with that which they hope to understand and
describe. This sympathetic understanding, depends on imagination. Through the imagination, then, the poet is
projected into the subject and lives according to its essential qualities. From this notion of the poet comes one of
Keats’s most significant contributions to poetic theory, the idea of Negative Capability. This idea extends the above
beliefs about escaping the self to form a philosophy about the poetic character and its proper relationship to the world.

Letter to George and Thomas Keats

In this letter john Keats, gives a definition of Negative Capability which is the “ability to contemplate the world without
the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.

My dear Brothers

I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this & &. I saw Kean return to the public in Richard III, & finely he
did it, & at the request of Reynolds I went to criticize his Luke in Riches—the critique is in todays champion, which I
send you with the Examiner in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas Gambols
& pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism that driveling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone
the publisher’s trial, you must find very amusing; & as
Englishmen very encouraging—his Not Guilty is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still more Liberty’s
Emblazoning. Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his own coin—Wooler & Hone have done us an essential service. I
have had two
very pleasant evenings with Dilke yesterday & today; & am at this moment just come from him & feel in the humour to
go on with this, began in the morning, & from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells & went the
next morning to
see Death on the Pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West’s age is considered; But there is nothing to be intense
upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality. The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable
of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth. Examine King Lear &
you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of
speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness. The picture is larger than Christ rejacted. I dined with Haydon the
sunday after you left, & had a very pleasant day, I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith &
met his two Brothers with Hill & Kingston & one Du Bois, they only served to convince me, how superior humour is to
wit in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel, they are all alike;
their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have a mannerism in their very eating & drinking, in their mere
handling a Decanter—They talked of Kean & his low company. Would I were with that company instead of your said I to
myself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me & yet I am going to Reynolds, on Wednesday. Brown & Dilke
walked with me & back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various
subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement
especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is
capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason— Coleridge, for
instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from
the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursed through
Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

The Victorian Age, 1830-1901

The term “Victorian” derives from QUEEN VICTORIA who ruled for more than half a century, from 1837 to 1901 and
became the symbol of the nation. It was a contradictory era: on one hand it was the age of progress, stability, social
reforms; on the other, it was also characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest.
During the Victorian Age, England changed as much and as dramatically as it had in all of its previous history. It
was in the nineteenth century that England reached its height as a world imperial power.
Changes in industrial production techniques had a profound impact an almost all aspects of life for every class of
citizen.
Unregulated industrialization created great prosperity for a lucky few but great misery for the masses.
Victorian era writers were mixed in their reactions to industrialization. Some celebrated the new age of promise,
progress, and triumph, while others challenged the so-called benefits of industrial growth when so many were being
affected so negatively.

Queen Victoria And The Victorian Temper

In many ways the Victorian age reflected values that Queen Victoria herself espoused: moral responsibility and
domestic propriety. In this sense, the adjective Victorian is also used to describe a set of moral values.
The Victorian were great moralisers: they faced a large number of problems that they felt obliged to support
certain values which offered solutions or escapes (misery, poor health conditions). So, they promoted a code of
values that reflected the world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on personal duty, hard work,
respectability and charity. On eof the most important notions was the need to work hard because it seemed
natural to believe that material progress would emerge from hard work.
The idea of respectability distinguished the middle class from the lower class. It was a mix of morality and
hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards. It implied the possession of good manners, the
ownership of a comfortable house with servants and carriage, regular attendance to church and charitable
activity. In this sense, philanhropy was a wide phenomenon: the rich middle class exploited the poor rithlessly
and at the same time managed to help stray children, fallen women and runken men.
Middle classes ideals also dominated Victorian family life. It was a patriarchal unit where the husband
represented the authority; sexuality was repressed in its public and private forms, and prudery led the
denunciation of nudity in art and the rejection of words with sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary. All
these aspects are part of what has come to be known as the Victorian compromise.

Queen Victoria’s reign was the longest in the hisotry of England; since the period lasted so long and because it was a
time of such great change, it is hard to characterize in any singular, overarching way. Thus, scholars often refer to three
distinct phases within the Victorian period: early (1830-1848); mid (1848-1870); and late (1870-1901). We often also
recognize the final decade of the nineteenth century (the 1890s) as an important transitional period between the
Victorian era and Modernism.

The early period (1830-1848): a time of troubles

The early Victorian period is marked by two major non-literary events: first, public railways expanded on an
unprecedented scale; and second, the British parliament passed a reform bill (First Reform Act) in 1832 that
redistributed voting rights to reflect growing population in newly industrializing centers.
The 1832 Reform Bill marked, for many Victorians, the beginning of a new age of political power.
The nation was identified with the Queen: her exemplary way of life, her strict code of behaviour, generally known
as “Victorianism” made her beloved especially by the middle classes who shared her moral and religious views. It
was a period of unprecedent material progress, imperial expansion and political developments and social reforms.
The merits of these achievements partly belong to the Queen who reigned constitutionally, avoiding the storm of
revolution which spread all over the Europe in 1848. She never over-ruled the Parliament and became a mediator
above party politics. During her Reign the 2 main political parties were the Liberals and the Conservative.
The 1830s and 1840s became known as the "Time of Troubles" largely because industrialization was producing such
rapid change on such a profound scale; industrialization had a cascading effect in as much as it caused many other
social "troubles."
Working conditions were deplorable for the majority of people, including women and children, who worked in mines
and factories.
A group called the Chartists organized themselves to fight for workers' rights and social reforms.
One of the most important reforms of the early Victorian period came with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846
promoted by the Liberal party. These laws imposed high tariffs on imported wheat and grains. And while the tariffs
meant good profits for England's own agricultural producers, it also meant prohibitively high prices, especially on basic
food items like bread, for the vast majority of the population.
The literature of this time period often focused on the plight of the poor and the new urban reality of industrial
England. Many writers commented on what had emerged as the two Englands: that of the wealthy (by far the minority)
and that of the poor (by far the majority).

The mid-victorian period (1848-1870): economic prosperity, the growth of Empire, and religious controversy
The mid-Victorian era was somewhat less tumultuous than was the earlier Victorian period as the relationship between
industry and government began to work itself out. However, the time was still one of great poverty and difficulty for
many, even as England as a whole began to enjoy greater prosperity.
A number of acts of Parliament curbed the worst abuses of laissez-faire industry, like child labor and dangerous
working conditions.
The 1850s were to many a time of optimism, with the promise of prosperity from industry seemingly so close.
Moreover there were scientific and technological developments, as is evidenced by the Crystal Palace, centerpiece
of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Britain’s leading industrial and economical position in the world was here
symbolized, where goods coming from all over the countries of the Empire were exhibited. The Crystal Palace was
designed using modern architectural principles and materials, and its role in the Great Exhibition was to showcase
English "progress" made possible by science and industry.
The mid-Victorian period was also a time when the British empire truly expanded around the globe (Australia, Canada,
and India, for example)―all part and parcel of the prosperity made possible by the industrial revolution. Most British
citizens believed that the imperail expansion would absorb excess goods, capital and population; moreover they were
extremely proud of their empire and regarded colonial expansion as a mission. Patriotism was also influenced by the
ideas of the racial superiority. There emerged the belief that the races of the world were divided by physical and
intellectual differences, that some were destinated to be led by others. It was thus an obligation imposed by God on the
British to bestow their superiority way of life on native people throughout the world.
In England itself, debates about religion grew in intensity. By the mid-Victorian period the Church of England had
evolved into three factions: a Low (or Evangelical) Church, a Broad Church, and a High Church. Each had their share of
proponents and detractors.
By the middle of the century Britain had become a nation of town dwellers. The fatc was mainly due to the
extraordinary industrial development; but this led to an overcrowded urban environment where poor lived in
segregated areas known as slums, appalling quarters characterized by squalor , disease and crime, The death rate was
high and the terrible working conditions in polluted atmoshperes had a disastrous effect especially on children’s
health. The Government promoted an effective campaign to clean up the towns, then devasted by cholera epidemics
and TB. Medicine also underwent a radical change: professional organizations were founded to regulate and control
medical education and research and modern hospitals were built. Other services were also introduced such as prisons,
police stations and boarding schools.
As a primary driver behind the industrial revolution, rationalist thought destabilized religious beliefs. Groups like the
utilitarian "Benthamites" came to see traditional religion as little more than outmoded superstition.
New discoveries in the sciences also led to a new mode of reading the Bible: Higher Criticism approached the Bible not
as a divine and infallible text but rather as an historically produced set of documents that reflected the prejudices and
limitations of their human writers.
Among other scientific works of the time Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species(1859) and The Descent of Man(1871)
seemed to challenge all previous thinking about creation and man's special role in the world. Arguig that man is the
result of a process of evolution and that in the fight for life only the strongest species survive, Darwin discarded the
version of the Bible and seemed to show that the weakest deserved to be defeated.
The mid-Victorian period would ultimately see often contrary forces―like the promise of progress yet the emptiness
of long-held beliefs―that would come to a head during the final decades of the Victorian era and that would
eventually be its undoing.

The late period (1870-1901): decay of victorian values

For many, the late-Victorian period was merely an extension, of the affluence of the preceding years.
For many others, though, the late-Victorian period became a time to fundamentally question―and challenge―the
assumptions and practices that had made such affluence possible. It became a time to hold England to account for the
way in which it had generated wealth for so few on the backs of so many, both at home and throughout the empire.
Home-rule for Ireland became an increasingly controversial topic of debate.
In 1867 a second Reform Bill passed, extending voting rights even further to some working-class citizens.
The political writings of authors like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels empowered the working class to imagine itself in
control of the industry that it made possible.

The nineties
The final decade of the Victorian period marked a high point, both of English industry and imperial control, and of
challenges to that industry and imperialism.
Even while British empire-building continued with great energy in Africa and India, in England many were
starting to see the beginning of the end of the era.
Gone was trust in Victorian propriety and morality. Instead, many writers struck a "fin de siècle" (or end-of-century)
pose: a weary sophistication with the optimism of forward progress when the limits of that progress seemed all too
near in sight.
With the benefit of hindsight we can see the 1890s as a transitional phase between the optimism and promise of the
Victorian period and the Modernist movement, during which artists began to challenge just how genuine that
optimism and promise had been in the first place

The role of women

Despite the fact that the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 changed voting rights by granting a political voice to
many among the working class, women were not included in these reforms.
In fact, despite its having been an era of great social change, the Victorian period (particularly its early and middle
periods) saw little progress for women's rights. Women had limited access to education, could not vote or hold
public office, and could not (until 1870) own property.
Debates about women's rights were referred to generally as "The Woman Question" (one of many issues in an age of
issues).
In 1848, the first women's college was established; women were otherwise excluded from England's three
universities.
It should be remembered that while the "Woman Question" often sought, at least in principle, rights for all women, it
was primarily addressed to women of the middle class. In other words, while women argued for access to employment
and bemoaned the stereotypical fate of the middle-class wife, who had to while away her time at home with
insignificant trivial pursuits, hundreds of thousands of lower-class women worked in grueling industrial conditions in
mines and mills.
Related to the larger "Woman Question," the problem of prostitution gained increasing visibility. Prostitution itself
grew, in part to fill demand, of course, but also because it was actually a better choice for many women relative to
the working conditions they would face in the factories.
Importantly, debates about gender did not necessarily fall down gendered lines: many men argued adamantly for
women's rights, and many women (like Queen Victoria herself) were not convinced that women should enjoy equality
with men.

Literacy, publication, and reading

As of 1837 roughly half of England's population was literate; that figure continued to grow throughout the
Victorian period (due especially to reforms that mandated at least minimal education for everybody).
Because of advances in printing technology, publishers could provide more texts (of various kinds) to more people. The
Victorian period saw enormous growth in periodicals of all kinds. Many famous novelists, like Charles Dickens, for
example, published their work not in book form at first but in serial installments in magazines.
The practical reality of publishing in serial form had a direct impact on style, including how plots were paced,
organized, and developed. (The experience of reading serialized novels is similar to that of the modern television
viewer watching a program that unfolds in a series of hour or half-hour segments.)
As literacy proliferated, the reading public became more and more fragmented. Writers thus had to consider how (or if)
their writing might appeal to niche audiences rather than to a unified "reading public."

Short fiction and the novel

Short fiction thrived during the Victorian period, thanks in part to the robust periodical culture of the time.

The victorian age was the Age of the novel. Better than other literary genres it mirrored the complexity of the period
and the profound changes that charcaterized it. During the victorian age for the first time there were a communion of
interest and opinions between writers and their readers that is to say they share the same frame of mind and referred
to the same code of values: optimism, conformism, philantrophy. One of the reason was the growth in the middle
classes who were avid consumers of literature. Not only could they buy more Books than in the past, thanks to the
lower prices, but also they could borrow them from circulating libraries and read various periodicals.
The novel became the most popular form of literature and the main form of entertainment; it was especially well suited
to authors who wanted to capture the wide diversity of industrial life and the class conflict and divisions that
industrialism created. The novelists felt they had a moral and social responsibility to fulfill: they aimed at reflecting the
social changes that had been in progress for a long time, such as the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy
and the growth of towns.
A common theme among Victorian novelists involves a protagonist who is trying to define him- or herself relative to
class and social systems.
They depicted society as they saw it; they were aware of the evils of their society and denounced them, however they
did not criticise the world they lived in, they just aimed at making readers realise social injustices and voiced their fears
and doubts. Since the Victorian novelists conceived literature also as a vehicle to correct the vices of the age, didacticism
can be taken as one of the main features of their works.
Features:
- the voice of the omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between right
and wrong; retribution and punishment were to be found in the final chapter were the whole texture of events and
adventure had to be explained and justified.
- The main setting was the city, which was the symbol of the Industrial civilisation.

Poetry
While prose fiction was the most widely circulated kind of writing in the Victorian period, poetry retained its iconic
status as "high literature." Poetry was linked to social reality and expressed intellectual and moral debate. Most
readers continued to expect poetry to teach a moral lesson, even though many writers were uncomfortable with
that aim.
As some Victorians would argue, it was through the writing and study of poetry in particular that individuals could
cultivate their greatest human potential.
Poets of the period ranged widely in their subject matter: some sought to revive mythic themes (Arthurian legend,
for example) while others turned a critical eye on the industrial abuses of the present (such as the problem of child
labor).
The new figure of the poet was that of a prophet and a philosopher. The great industrial development, the rapid
changes in society risulted in a crisis of faith and morals, leading a sense of uncertainty. A poet could reconcile faith and
progress and throw a coloring of romance over the unromantic materialism of modern life.
The major poets of the age were Tennyson, appointed “poet Laureate” by Queen Victoria and Browning,
remembered as an original creator of characters in his dramatic monologues. In the middle years of the century a
group of poets and painters, who calles themselves Pre Raphaelites tried to react against a society which destroyed
the beauty of nature. They considered poetry and material progress as opposites, they thought that it was
impossible to reconcile them in any sort of compromise. For them, only beauty could improve society. They paved
the way to the Aestethic Movement of the Art for art-s sake.

Prose

Nonfiction prose writing gained wide readership during the Victorian period (due again to the vibrant periodical
culture). No less, authors were attracted to nonfiction prose as the best vehicle for addressing―in a direct and
specific way―the problems of industrial England and, in some cases, for proposing solutions to these problems.
Nonfiction prose authors (who were often writers of fiction and poetry as well) tackled subjects that were as diverse as
the age itself, including politics, religion, art, economics, and education.
Much Victorian nonfiction prose is marked by a sense of urgency, which reflects the pace of change of the age:
many authors felt that society would, at some point, be overwhelmed by change and descend into some form
of what Matthew Arnold called simply "anarchy."

Drama and theatre

During the Victorian age new theatres were built in London and in other cities. These play houses where smaller than
the ones built in the previous century and helped the appreciation of both tragedy and comedy. They were more
comfortable and the new methods of lighting the stage where capable of producing more realistic effects.
In addition to traditional plays, the theater also included all manner of spectacle, from burlesque to musicals to
pantomime.
The most common types are theatrical performances where farce, a play intended to make the spectators laugh and
melodrama with a sensational and romantic plot. The ingredients were often the same, such as virtues heroines in
danger, conspiring villains and happy endings with the triumph of true love and the punishment of evil
Especially towards the end of the Victorian period, playwrights like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde began to
reflect, in an increasingly satirical way, the pretentious values and behavior that they believed characterized Victorian
life.
Wilde wrote brilliant comedies whose main feature was a dialogue full of humorous, witty remarks to expose the faults
and hypocrisy of his age.

Victorian issues: Evolution and Industrialism

One of the most dramatic controversies in the Victorian age concerned theories of evolution. This controversy exploded
into prominence in 1859 when Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published in which he established the principle of
natural selection. His ideas had been reflected in some works.
The Industrial Revolution was the result of a complex set of causes, none of which, by itself, could have given rise to the
phenomenon: the crucial technological innovations would have meant little without notable population growth, an
increase in agricultural efficiency that released much of the workforce from field labor, and key economic changes, such
as greater mobility of capital. Moved by the terrible suffering of the workers, which was intensified by a severe
depression in the early 1840s, writers and legislators drew increasingly urgent attention to the condition of the
working class. A number of parliamentary committees and commissions in the 1830s and 1840s introduced testimony
about working conditions in mines and factories that led to the beginning of government regulation and inspection,
particularly of the working conditions of women and children. Other eyewitness accounts created a growing
consciousness of the plight of the workers. The terrible living and working conditions of industrial labourers led a
number of writers to see the Industrial Revolution as an appalling retrogression. They criticized industrial manufacture
not only for the misery of the conditions it created but also for its regimentation of minds and hearts as well as bodies
and resources.
.
From Hard Times - [COKETOWN]
“It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it;
but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a
town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves
forever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-
smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all
day long, and where the piston of the steam engine worked monotonously up and down like the head
of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one
another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one
another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to
do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year
the counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained;
against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to
hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion
built a chapel there—as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done—they made it a pious
warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamented examples) a bell in a
birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square
steeple over the door terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public
inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have
been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town hall might have been either, or
both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction.
Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the
relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital1
and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest
market and salable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.”

Victorian issues: The Woman Question

As indicated in our introduction to the Victorian age, the Woman Question encompassed not one question but many.
The mixed opinions of Queen Victoria illustrate some of its different aspects. Believing in education for her sex, she gave
support and encouragement to the founding of a college for women in 1847. On the other hand, she opposed the
concept of votes for women, which she described in a letter as "this mad folly." Equally thought-provoking are her
comments on women and marriage. Happily married herself until the death of Prince Albert in 1861, Victoria was
nevertheless aware of some of the sacrifices marriage imposed on women. Writing in 1858 to her recently married
daughter, she remarked: "There is great happiness . . . in devoting oneself to another who is worthy of one's affection;
still, men are very selfish and the woman's devotion is always one of submission which makes our poor sex so very
unenviable. This you will feel hereafter—I know; though it cannot be otherwise as God has willed it so." Many of the
queen's female subjects shared her assumptions that woman's role was to be accepted as divinely willed. In this climate
it would follow that a woman who tried to cultivate her intellect beyond drawing-room accomplishments was violating
the order of Nature and of religious tradition. Woman was to be valued, instead, for other qualities considered
especially characteristic of her sex: tenderness of understanding, unworldliness and innocence, domestic affection, and,
in various degrees, submissiveness. By virtue of these qualities, woman became an object to be worshipped—an "angel
in the house.
In the mid-Victorian period, one-quarter of England's female population had jobs, most of them onerous and low paying.
At the same time other women earned their livings by working as prostitutes (the existence of this "Great Social Evil," as
the Victorians regarded it, being one indication that the "angel in the house" was not always able to exert her moralizing
influence on her mate or her male children). While the millions of women employed as domestics, seamstresses, factory
workers, farm laborers, or prostitutes had many problems, excessive leisure was not chief among them. To be bored
was the privilege of wives and daughters in upperand middle-class homes, establishments in which feminine idleness
was treasured as a status symbol. If family finances failed and they were called on "to do" something, women from
these classes faced considerable difficulties: their severely limited choice of respectable paid occupations meant that
many sought employment as governesses.

The empire and the national identity

Great Britain during Victoria's reign was not just a powerful island nation. It was the center of a global empire that
brought the British into contact with a wide variety of other cultures, though the exchange was usually an unequal one.
By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly one-quarter of the earth's land surface was part of the British Empire, and
more than four hundred million people were governed (however nominally) from Great Britain. Ireland was a kind of
internal colony whose demands for home rule were alternately entertained and discounted. India had started the
century under the control of a private entity, the East India Company, but was ruled directly from Britain after the 1857
Indian Mutiny (the first war of Indian independence), and Victoria was crowned empress of India in 1877.
A far more rapid expansion took place between 1870 and 1900, three decades that witnessed "the new imperialism"—a
significantly different British mode of empire building that would continue until World War I (1914— 18). Britain's rivalry
with its European neighbors was an instrumental factor: the balance of power in Europe had shifted in the wake of the
Franco-Prussian War (1870—71), leading to competition for new territories.
The British Empire had an incalculable physical and psychological impact on the individuals and cultures it colonized, but
it also significantly changed the colonizers themselves, both at home and abroad. The need to concentrate on the
imperial mission affected in theoretical and practical ways the consolidation of a specifically British identity: the
conflicted relations and characteristic differences between people from the various parts of the British Isles (politically
dominant England and long conquered Wales, Scotland, and Ireland) appeared less significant when set against the
much more obvious inequities of power and greater cultural, racial, religious, and linguistic differences across the globe.
A number of similar processes worked to solidify nationhood more generally. The citizens of Great Britain were thus
welded into a more cohesive whole. But few of them were ready to accept the peoples of the colonies (and especially
indigenous nonwhite populations) as truly "British," despite the inclusive rhetoric of empire (the "one imperial whole"
that Alfred, Lord Tennyson salutes in his poem on the opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886). To J. A.
Hobson, the author of the influential Imperialism: A Study (1902), the importance of this casual affirmation of shared
subjecthood was negligible, given that "not five per cent of the population of our Empire are possessed of any
appreciable portion of the political and civil liberties which are the basis of British civilisation." Writing after Britain's
imperial confidence had been severely damaged

by the unanticipated length and difficulty of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 in South Africa, Hobson in his meticulous
analysis aimed not only to cast serious doubt on imperialism's putative financial benefit to Britain but also to
demonstrate the overall falsity of the empire's claim to support the extension of self-government in its territories. In
exposing the repeated misrepresentations and self-serving justifications at the heart of the British Empire, Hobson
joined voices with others around the globe, such as the West Indian intellectual J . J . Thomas, and entered a tradition of
antiimperial critique that was to grow exponentially in the twentieth century. It is instructive to consider the following
discussions of Britain's relationship with other parts of the world, and its understanding of its own identity, in the
context of a number of other selections. The popularity of Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam (1859) testifies to the Victorians' fascination with what they saw as the exotic appeal of distant cultures;
Tennyson's poem "Locksley Hall" (1842) also reflects on "yonder shining Orient." Matthew Arnold's prose writings
frequently address the issue of national character, while John Henry Newman
sets forth an ideal of English manliness in his "definition of a gentleman" in Discourse 8 of The Idea of a University
(1852). Versions of this ideal from the apex of Great Britain's period of national pride appear in two highly popular
poems, W. E. Henley's "Invictus" (1888) and Kipling's " I f ' (1910); Kipling's other poems and his novella The Man Who
Would Be King (1888) are also essential reading for those interested in the intensification of imperial enthusiasm at the
end of Victoria's reign. At the same time we should heed the warning of the postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak against
limiting any investigation of empire and national identity only to those writings that seem overtly concerned with the
topic. "It should not be possible to read nineteenth-century British literature," she insists at the beginning of an analysis
of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), "without remembering that imperialism, understood as England's social mission,
was a crucial part of the cultural representation of England to the English." In other words, images, explanations, and
justifications of this massive enterprise were continually created and reflected throughout the pages of a wide range of
Victorian texts.

Tennyson 1809- 1892

Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809. His father was a church rector who earned a decent income. Tennyson's home
wasn't a happy one. His father was an alcoholic and drug user who at times physically threatened members of the
family.
It was at university that Tennyson met Arthur Hallam, who became a close friend, and joined a group of students who
called themselves the Apostles. Tennyson's father died in 1831. His death meant straitened circumstances for the
family, and Tennyson did not complete his degree. As a younger son, Tennyson was encouraged to find a profession,
such as entering the church like his father. However, the young man was determined to focus on poetry.
Poetic Success
He hit a career high note with "In Memoriam" (1850). The elegiac creation incorporated Tennyson's sorrow about his
friend Arthur Hallam's death.
Queen Victoria selected Tennyson to succeed William Wordsworth as England's new poet laureate. Tennyson's poetry
became more and more widely read, which gave him both an impressive income and an ever-increasing level of fame.
Tennyson became friendly with Queen Victoria, who found comfort in reading "In Memoriam" following the death of
her husband Prince Albert in 1861.
The poet suffered from gout, and experiencing a recurrence that grew worse in the late summer of 1892, later, on
October 6, at the age of 83, Tennyson passed away at his Aldworth home in Surrey. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey's Poets' Corner. Tennyson was the leading poet of the Victorian age.
Although decried by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the
attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its
medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees: All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Ulysses (Odysseus) declares that there is little point in his staying home
“by this still hearth” with his old wife, doling out rewards and
punishments for the unnamed masses who live in his kingdom.
Still speaking to himself he proclaims that he “cannot rest from travel”
but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of
life. He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels the seas,
and he considers himself a symbol for everyone who wanders and
roams the earth. His travels have exposed him to many different types
of people and ways of living. They have also exposed him to the
“delight of battle” while fighting the Trojan War with his men. Ulysses
declares that his travels and encounters have shaped who he is: “I am a
part of all that I have met,” he asserts. And it is only when he is
traveling that the “margin” of the globe that he has not yet traversed
shrink and fade, and cease to goad him.
Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
remain stationary is to rust rather than to shine; to stay in one place is
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To to pretend that all there is to life is the simple act of breathing, whereas
rust unburnished, not to shine in use! he knows that in fact life contains much novelty, and he longs to
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on encounter this. His spirit yearns constantly for new experiences that
life Were all too little, and of one to me will broaden his horizons; he wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking
Little remains; but every hour is saved star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were Ulysses now speaks to an unidentified audience concerning his son
For some three suns to store and hoard Telemachus, who will act as his successor while the great hero resumes
myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire his travels: he says, “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
leave the scepter and the isle.” He speaks highly but also patronizingly
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, of his son’s capabilities as a ruler, praising his prudence, dedication, and
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle devotion to the gods. Telemachus will do his work of governing the
– Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild work, I mine.”
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good. In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of worked, traveled, and weathered life’s storms over many years. He
common duties, decent not to fail declares that although he and they are old, they still have the potential
In offices of tenderness, and pay to do something noble and honorable before “the long day wanes.” He
Meet adoration to my household gods,
encourages them to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, “beyond the sunset” until his death. Perhaps, he suggests, they may
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer
– That ever with a frolic welcome took described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths. Although
Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are
old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they
Death closes all; but something ere the end, are “strong in will” and are sustained by their resolve to push onward
Some work of noble note, may yet be done, relentlessly: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the
deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my
friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose
holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the
baths Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And
see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though
much is taken, much abides; and though We are not
now that strength which in old days Moved earth
and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal
temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Form
This poem is written as a dramatic monologue: the entire poem is spoken by a single character, whose identity is
revealed by his own words. The lines are in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, which serves to impart a
fluid and natural quality to Ulysses’s speech. Many of the lines are enjambed, which means that a thought does not
end with the line-break; the sentences often end in the middle, rather than the end, of the lines. The use of
enjambment is appropriate in a poem about pushing forward “beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” Finally,
the poem is divided into four paragraph-like sections, each of which comprises a distinct thematic unit of the poem.

Analysis
In this poem, written in 1833 and revised for publication in 1842, Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing
on the ancient hero of Homer’s Odyssey (“Ulysses” is the Roman form of the Greek “Odysseus”) and the medieval
hero of Dante’s Inferno. Homer’s Ulysses learns from a prophecy that he will take a final sea voyage after killing the
suitors of his wife Penelope. The details of this sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto XXVI of the Inferno: Ulysses
finds himself restless in Ithaca and driven by “the longing I had to gain experience of the world.” Dante’s Ulysses is a
tragic figure who dies while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson combines these two
accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to Ithaca and resuming his administrative
responsibilities, and shortly before embarking on his final voyage.
However, this poem also concerns the poet’s own personal journey, for it was composed in the first few weeks after
Tennyson learned of the death of his dear college friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Like In Memoriam, then, this
poem is also an elegy for a deeply cherished friend. Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving poet, proclaims his
resolution to push onward in spite of the awareness that “death closes all” (line 51). As Tennyson himself stated, the
poem expresses his own need of going forward after the loss of his beloved Hallam.
The poem’s final line, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” came to serve as a motto for the poet’s Victorian
contemporaries: the poem’s hero longs to flee the tedium of daily life and to enter a mythical dimension. As such, he
was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic rebellion against bourgeois conformity. Thus for Tennyson’s
immediate audience, the figure of Ulysses held not only mythological meaning, but stood as an important
contemporary cultural icon as well.

Three Stages in Ulysses

The poem begins with Ulysses admitting that his life is a monotony despite him being king. All he does is waste his
time with a people who don't know him. His wife is old, he doesn't even mention her name. (lines 1 - 5)

Ulysses looks back to better days when he truly lived and travelled the world. He yearns for more adventure and 'to
follow knowledge' (lines 6 - 32)

Ulysses rejects the status quo.

He knows his son Telemachus will take over the kingdom and run it well when Ulysses has gone.
(lines 33 - 43).

Abdicates responsibility.

Ulysses addresses his mariners and prepares them for the journey of all journeys, 'beyond the sunset', to seek
and find and not to yield. (lines 44 - 70).

Prepares for the final journey.

The main idea or theme of Ulysses is that of conquering or overcoming a situation that threatens to bring a person
down. The poem builds up to those final few lines which are defiant, hopeful, pro-life and inspirational.
The tone of Ulysses is reflective, contemplative and hopeful. The speaker has come to the conclusion that,
to live a meaningful life, he has to move on from his domestic situation.
Whilst the poem is a kind of dramatic monologue, it is more of a soliloquy - an address to oneself but in the
presence of others.

Robert Browning 1812- 1889

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the
foremost Victorian poets. He was born on May 7, 1812 in Camberwell, a suburb of London. Browning’s father
supported the family by working as a bank clerk, and assembled a large library — some 6,000 books — which formed
the foundation of the younger Browning’s somewhat unconventional education.
Browning’s family was devoted to his being a poet, supporting him financially and publishing his early works.
His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and
challenging vocabulary and syntax.
Few poets have suffered more than Browning from hostile incomprehension or misplaced admiration, both arising
very often from a failure to recognize the predominantly dramatic nature of his work. The bulk of his writing before
1846 was for the theatre; thereafter his major poems showed his increasing mastery of the dramatic monologue. This
consists essentially of a narrative spoken by a single character and amplified by his comments on his story and the
circumstances in which he is speaking.

Multiple Perspectives on Single Events

The dramatic monologue verse form allowed Browning to explore the minds of specific characters in specific places
struggling with specific sets of circumstances. Dramatic monologues allow readers to enter into the minds of various
characters and to see an event from that character’s perspective. Understanding the thoughts, feelings, and
motivations of a character not only gives readers a sense of sympathy for the characters but also helps readers
understand the multiplicity of perspectives that make up the truth. So, it is a kind of narrative poem in which a single
character may address one or more listeners. And it is dramatic because it is related to the theatre as regards its
technique.
The speaking character is different from the poet himself and he is caught in a crucial moment of crisis. A non speaking
listener is present and conditions the development of the monologue. Since the pote does not speak with his own
voice, the reader has to infer whether he is intended to accept or criticise what is said by the speaker.

The Relationship Between Art and Morality

Throughout his work, Browning tried to answer questions about an artist’s responsibilities and to describe the
relationship between art and morality. He questioned whether artists had an obligation to be moral and whether
artists should pass judgment on their characters and creations. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Browning
populated his poems with evil people, who commit crimes and sins ranging from hatred to murder. The dramatic
monologue format allowed Browning to maintain a great distance between himself and his creations: by channeling
the voice of a character, Browning could explore evil without actually being evil himself. His characters served as
Personae that let him adopt different traits and tell stories about horrible situations. In “My Last Duchess,” the
speaker gets away with his wife’s murder since neither his audience (in the poem) nor his creator judges or criticizes
him. Instead, the responsibility of judging the character’s morality is left to readers, who find the duke of Ferrara a
vicious, repugnant person even as he takes us on a tour of his art gallery.

My Last Duchess
This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century.
The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the
Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor
through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl.

The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a
diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-
hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the
Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, Having made this disclosure, the Duke
returns to the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the
emissary walk leave the painting behind the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection.

“My Last Duchess” comprises rhyming pentameter lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they use
enjambment—that is, sentences and other grammatical units do not necessarily conclude at the end of lines.
Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure when they come, but rather remain a subtle driving force
behind the Duke’s compulsive revelations. The poem provides a classic example of a dramatic monologue: the
speaker is clearly distinct from the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the poem; and the revelation
of the Duke’s character is the poem’s primary aim.

Objectively, it's easy to identify the Duke as a monster, since he had his wife murdered for what comes across as
fairly innocuous crimes. And yet he is impressively charming, both in his use of language and his affable address.

My Last Duchess was written in the Victorian age, when women were seen more as property in a marriage than real
humans capable of love.
Generally speaking men were in charge in a relationship; serious notions of equality had not yet been raised.
Browning no doubt had this in mind when he wrote the poem, an attempt to explore the dominant role of the
male in society, the idea of ownership and the position of women in marriage.
The specific historical setting of the poem harbors much significance: the Italian Renaissance held a particular
fascination for Browning and his contemporaries, for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human
alongside, or in some cases in the place of, the religious and the moral.
Thus the temporal setting allows Browning to again explore sex, violence, and aesthetics as all entangled,
complicating and confusing each other: the lushness of the language belies the fact that the Duchess was punished
for her natural sexuality. The Duke’s ravings suggest that most of the supposed transgressions took place only in his
mind.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the

wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s
hands Worked busily a day, and there she
stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I
said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made
glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, The
dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she
let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en
then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to
stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I
passed her; but who passed without Much the same
smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles
stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t
please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence Is
ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
The Pre – Raphaelite Brotherhood
In 1848 a group of young artists and writers came together in what they called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 by three Royal Academy students: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was a gifted
poet as well as a painter, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, all under 25 years of age.
Their principal object was to reform English painting by repudiating the established academic style in favour of a revival of the
simplicity and pure colors of pre-Renaissance art. They were against the artificial historical painting of the London-s Royal
Academy and purpose a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works.
They were inspired by Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries, and their adoption of the name Pre-Raphaelite expressed their
admiration for what they saw as the direct and uncomplicated depiction of nature typical of Italian painting before the High
Renaissance and, particularly, before the time of Raphael. Although the Brotherhood’s active life lasted not quite five years, its
influence on painting in Britain, and ultimately on the decorative arts and interior design, was profound.
The artists advocated a return to the simplicity and sincerity of subject and style found in an earlier age. Their aims were vague
and contradictory, even paradoxical, which was only to be expected from a youthful movement made up of strong-minded
individuals who sought to modernise art by reviving the practices of the Middle Ages.

The brotherhood's early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations:

1. to have genuine ideas to express;

2. to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
3. to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional
and self-parading and learned by rote; and
4. most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the son of an Italian patriot and scholar whose political activities had led to his being exiled to
England. Displaying extraordinary early promise both as a painter and as a poet, Dante Gabriel luxuriated in colors and textures,
and was especially drawn to feminine beauty. His view of life and art, derived in part from his close study of John Keats's poems
and letters, anticipated by many years the aesthetic movement later to be represented by men such as Walter Pater and Oscar
Wilde.
The beauty that Rossetti admired in the faces of women was of a distinctive kind. In at least two of his models he found what he
sought. The first was his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, whose suicide in 1862 haunted him with a sense of guilt for the rest of his life.
The other was Jane Morris, the wife of his friend William Morris. In Rossetti's paintings both of these models are shown with
dreamy stares, as if they were breathless from visions of heaven; Similar combinations of spirituality and physicality, or mind and
body, are to be found in many of Rossetti's poems. For instance, the central figure of "The Blessed Damozel" (1850), a poem
begun when Bossetti was eighteen and was heavily influenced by the work of Dante Alighieri, leans upon "the gold bar of
heaven" and makes it "warm" with her bosom.
Rossetti played a central role in founding the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He grew away from the Pre-Raphaelite manner and
his early choice of religious subjects, cultivating instead a more richly ornate style of painting. From the 1850s on he moved
away from P.R.M to create a more individual art. He became concerned with the expression of his own private obsession in a
style of decorative richness. These works represent a concept of art now generally known as Symbolism that widespread in
the sendon half of the 19 th century as an alternative to Realism and to the Impressionist movement which developed out of
it. In both the early and the late phases of his art, however, many have viewed him as essentially a poet in his painting and a
painter in his poetry.

W. Morris (1834-1896)

Morris's career was more multifaceted than that of any other Victorian writer. He was a poet, a writer of prose romances, a
painter, a designer of furniture, a businessman, a printer, and a leader of the British socialist movement. Born of wealthy
parents and brought up in the Essex countryside, he went to Oxford with the intention of becoming a clergyman. However, art
for him soon displaced religion.
At Oxford he discovered the work of John Ruskin, which was, in his words, "a revelation."
In 1861 Morris and several friends founded a company to design and produce furniture, wallpaper, textiles, stained glass,
tapestries, and carpets, objects still prized today as masterpieces of decorative art. Morris's aim was not only to make beautiful
things but to restore creativity to modern manufacture. The minor arts, he believed, were in a state of complete degradation;
through his firm he wanted to restore beauty of design and individual craftsmanship.
In 1858 Morris published a remarkable book of poetry, The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems, which some critics
regard as the finest book of Pre-Raphaelite verse. Using medieval materials, the poems plunge the reader into the middle of
dramatic situations with little sense of larger narrative context or even right and wrong, where little is clear but the vividness
of the characters' perceptions. After The Defence of Guenevere, Morris turned from lyric to narrative, publishing The Life and
Death of Jason (1867) and The Earthly Paradise (1868—70), a series of twenty-four classical and medieval tales.
In the late 1870s, after Morris came to the conclusion that art could not have real life and growth under the commercialism of
modern society, he turned to socialism. In 1883 he joined the Socialist Democratic Federation; the next year he led the secession
of a large faction to found the Socialist League. He was at the center of socialist activity in England through the rest of the
decade. At the famous debates held on Sunday evenings at Morris's house, political and literary figures regularly gathered,
including Yeats and Bernard Shaw. Morris lectured and wrote tirelessly for the cause, producing essays, columns, and a series of
socialist literary works, including A Dream of John Ball (1887) and News from Noivhere (1890), a Utopian vision of life under
communism in twenty-first-century England.

Walter Pater

He was an English essayist, literary and art critic, and fiction writer. Pater commands our attention as the writer of exemplary
impressionistic criticism. Studies in the History of the Renaissance, a collection of essays published in 1873, was the first of
several volumes that established Walter Pater as one of the most influential writers of the late Victorian period. After graduation
Pater remained at Oxford, a shy bachelor who spent his life teaching classics. In each of his essays he seeks to communicate
what he called the "special unique impression of pleasure" made on him by the works of some artist or writer. His range of
subjects included the dialogues of Plato, the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, the plays of Shakespeare, and the writings of the
French Romantic school of the nineteenth century.
The principles of what would be known as the Aesthetic Movement were partly traceable to him, and his effect was
particularly felt on one of the movement's leading proponents, Oscar Wilde, who paid tribute to him in The Critic as Artist.
Of particular value to students of English literature are his discriminating studies of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Sir Thomas Browne in his volume of Appreciations (1889) and his essay on the poetry of William
Morris titled "Aesthetic Poetry" (1868).
The final sentences of his Appreciations volume are a revealing indication of Pater's critical position. After having attempted to
show the differences between the classical and romantic schools of art, he concludes that most great artists combine the
qualities of both.

Pater's critical method was outlined in the "Preface" to The Renaissance (1873). The Renaissance is a series of essays by Walter
Pater written between 1867 and 1877 and was published as a collection in multiple editions. In each essay Pater critiques a
specific renaissance artist or poet and emphasizes the importance of embracing the beauty and experience of art rather than
judging a work of art by its accuracy or the moral standing of the artist.

The essays are able to stand on their own, and they are unified by the encasement of the Preface and Conclusion.
The preface shows the example of the “student of Aesthetics” who asks himself a number of questions when viewing a piece of
art, or any other experience, all of which focus on the emotional impact that work or experience makes upon him. Furthermore,
Pater implies that the value of a piece of art should be largely measured by the scale and consistency of this moving experience,
using the poetry of Wordsworth as an example where “Genius... has crystallized a part, but only a part.” This receptionist
approach to viewing art comes as a stark contrast to the interpreted style favored by John Ruskin and other early art critics.
Text
Studies in the History of the Renaissance
Preface
Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general
terms, to find some universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the suggestive and penetrating
things said by the way. Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate
between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more
precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and
the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract
but in the most concrete terms possible, to find not its universal formula, but the formula which expresses most adequately this
or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics. "To see the object as in itself it really is,"1 has
been justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object
as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realize it distinctly. The objects with which
aesthetic criticism deals—music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeed receptacles of so many
powers or forces: they possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, this
engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure?
and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to
these questions are the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of light, of morals, of number,
one must realize such primary data for one's self, or not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives
directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in
itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions
elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of no interest to him. The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the
objects with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing
pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, by
analyzing and reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, "La
Gioconda," the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, 2 are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem;
for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in
proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And the function of the aesthetic critic is to
distinguish, to analyze, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a
book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what
conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some
natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the
words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve: De se borner a connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a sen nourrir en exquis amateurs,
en humanistesaccomplish What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for
the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. He will
remember always that beauty exists in many forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves equal. In all
ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always: In whom did the
stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The
ages are all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is always above its age."4 Often it will require great nicety to disengage this
virtue from the commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work
quite cleanly, casting off all debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has wholly fused and transformed.
Take, for instance, the writings of Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his work, has crystallized a
part, but only a part, of it; and in that great mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But scattered up and
down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire compositions, like the stanzas on Resolution and Independence, or the Ode
on the Recollections of Childhood,5 sometimes, as if at random, depositing a fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not
wholly search through and transmute, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable faculty, that strange, mystical sense of
a life in natural things, and of man's life as a part of nature, drawing strength and color and character from local influences, from
the hills and streams, and from natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the virtue, the active principle in Wordsworth's poetry;
and then the function of the critic of Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, to mark the degree in
which it penetrates his verse. The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the Renaissance, and touch
what I think the chief points in that complex, manysided movement. I have explained in the first of them what I understand by
the word, giving it a much wider scope than was intended by those who originally used it to denote that revival of classical
antiquity in the fifteenth century which was only one of many results of a general excitement and enlightening of the human
mind, but of which the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were
another result. This outbreak of the human spirit may be traced far into the Middle Age itself, with its motives already clearly
pronounced, the care for physical beauty, the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the religious system
of the Middle Age imposed on the heart and the imagination. 1 have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier
Renaissance within the Middle Age itself, and as an expression of its qualities, two little compositions in early French; not
because they constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they help the unity of my series, inasmuch as the
Renaissance ends also in France, in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay6 are in many ways the
most perfect illustration. The Renaissance, in truth, put forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the products of
which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetness which belongs to a refined and comely decadence, just as its earliest
phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, the charm of ascesis, 7 of the austere and serious
girding of the loins in youth. But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the Renaissance mainly lies—in that
solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the intellect
and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic charm, but
for its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type. The various forms of intellectual
activity which together make up the culture of an age, move for the most part from different starting points, and by
unconnected roads. As products of the same generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously
illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may
be in intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in
the conspicuous places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of ideas, and those who prosecute either of
them are generally little curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to time, eras of more favorable
conditions, in which the thoughts of men draw nearer together than is their wont, and the many interests of the intellectual
world combine in one complete type of general culture. The fifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier eras, and what is
sometimes said of the age of Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:8 it is an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralized,
complete. Here, artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world has elevated and made keen, do not live in
isolation, but breathe a common air, and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts. There is a spirit of general elevation
and enlightenment in which all alike communicate. The unity of this spirit gives unity to all the various products of the
Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance with mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age produced, that
the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of its grave dignity and influence. I have added an essay on Winckelmann, 9 as
not incongruous with the studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenth century, really belongs in
spirit to an earlier age. By his enthusiasm for the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, by his Hellenism,
his lifelong struggle to attain to the Greek spirit, he is in sympathy with the humanists of a previous century. He is the last fruit of
the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its motive and tendencies.
John Ruskin 1819-1900

Was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, philosopher,
prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology,
literature, education, botany and political economy.
His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides
and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes,
and architectural structures and ornamentation.
The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate
his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline,
his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his
ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
John Ruskin was both the leading Victorian critic of art and an important critic of society. These two roles can be traced back to
two important influences of his childhood. His father, a wealthy wine merchant, enjoyed travel, and on tours of the Continent
he introduced his son to landscapes, architecture, and art. From this exposure Ruskin acquired a zest for beauty that animates
even the most theoretical of his discussions of aesthetics. Ruskin's choice of phrase in these accounts of how beauty affected
him reflects the second influence in his life, often at odds with the first: his daily Bible readings under the direction of his
mother, a devout Evangelical Christian. From this biblical indoctrination Ruskin derived some elements of his lush and highly
rhythmical prose style but more especially his sense of prophecy and mission as a critic of modern society. Ruskin's life was
spent in traveling, lecturing, and writing.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS 1844-1889

It has been said that the most important date in Gerard Manley Hopkins's career was 1918, twenty-nine years after his death,
for it was then that the first publication of his poems made them accessible to the world of readers. During his lifetime these
remarkable poems, most of them celebrating the wonders of God's creation, had been known only to a small circle of friends,
including his literary executor who waited until 1918 before releasing them to a publisher. Partly because his work was first
made public in a twentieth-century volume, but especially because of his striking experiments in meter and diction, Hopkins
was widely hailed as a pioneering figure of "modern" literature.

He felt that everything in the universe was characterized by what he called inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes
individual identity. This identity is not static but dynamic. Each being in the universe "selves," that is, enacts its identity. And the
human being, the most highly selved, the most individually distinctive being in the universe, recognizes the inscape of other
beings in an act that Hopkins calls instress, the apprehension of an object in an intense thrust of energy toward it that enables
one to realize its specific distinctiveness. Ultimately, the instress of inscape leads one to Christ, for the individual identity of any
object is the stamp of divine creation on it. In the act of instress, therefore, the human being becomes a celebrant of the divine,
at once recognizing God's creation and enacting his or her own God-given identity within it. Poetry for Hopkins enacts this
celebration. It is instress, and it realizes the inscape of its subject in its own distinctive design.

Hopkins also uses a new rhythm to give each poem its distinctive design. In the new metric system he created, which he called
sprung rhythm, lines have a given number of stresses, but the number and placement of unstressed syllables is highly variable
Hopkins argued that sprung rhythm was the natural rhythm of common speech and written prose, as well as of music. He
found a model for it in Old English poetry and in nursery rhymes, but he claimed that it had not been used in English poetry
since the Elizabethan age. The density and difficulty that result from Hopkins's unconventional rhythm and syntax make his
poetry seem modern, but his concern with the imagination's shaping of the natural world puts him very much in the Romantic
tradition.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

This is one of the strongest and controversy character of the all English literature. He was a writer, poet and an aesthete.
He skilfully moved among prose and theatre and some poetry. He was able to paint a detailed picture of contemporary society
through an intelligent use of irony.
He was born in Dublin in 1854. Oscar's mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-1896), was a successful poet and journalist.
She wrote patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym "Speranza". Oscar's father, Sir William Wilde (1815 - 1876), was a leading
ear and eye surgeon.
After attending Trinity College in Dublin, he was sent to Oxford, where he gained a first class degree in classics and distinguished
himself for his eccentricity. He became a disciple of Walter Pater, accepting the theory of 'Art for Art's Sake'. After graduating,
he left Oxford and settled in London, where he soon became a fashionable dandy for his extraordinary wit and his extravagant
way of dressing.
In 1881, he published his first collection of poetry - Poems that received mixed reviews by critics. He worked as an art reviewer,
lectured in the United States and Canada where he gave some lectures on the Pre Praphaelites and the Aesthetes. The tour was
a remarkable personal success for Wilde, who made himself known for his irony, his attitides and his poses.
In 1883, Oscar married Constance Lloyd, who bore him two sons. To support his family, Oscar accepted a job as the editor of
Woman's World magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889.
At this point of his career, he was most noted as a great talker: his presence became a social event and his remarks
appeared in the most fashionable London magazines. As a tribute to his dandified Aestheticism, women wore lilies so
as many young men.

In the late 1880s, Wilde's literary talent was revealed by a series of short stories, The Canterville Ghost, Lord Arthur Savile's
Crime, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, written for his children, and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). After his first
and only novel, he developed an interest in drama. In the 1890, he produced a series of plays which were successful on the
London stage, such as his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest and the tragedy Salome.
However, both the novel and the tragedy damaged the writer's reputation: the former was considered immoral, and the
latter was prevented from appearing on the London stage due to its presumed obscenity.

In 1891, Wilde met the handsome young nobleman Lord Alfred Douglas, whose nickname was Bosie and with whom he dared
to have a homosexual affair. The boy's father forced a public trial and Wilde was convicted of homosexual practices and
subsequently sentenced to two years of hard labour. While in prison, he wrote De Profundis, a long letter to explain his life and
to condemn Lord Alfred Douglas for abandoning him; this work was published posthumously in 1905. After Wilde was released
from prison, he lived in France under a pseudonym, as an outcast in poverty. He died of meningitis in Paris in 1900.

Life as a work of art

One of the greatest problems a man had in Victorian times was to be acknowledged as a member of society.

• Respectability
• Appearance
• Sobriety

British identity - though not yet precisely defined quite strong a sentiment. Not being part of the British society system
meant to be automatically excluded from any social life and relationship. This reflected enormously on identity research
>particularly in the case of men of intellect coming from the colonies.

Ireland > the first and the nearest colony of the British Empire, a sort of mirror, a looking-glass where England could see
her worst attitudes reflected.

University
Since their establishment, all Universities were open to young people of both sexes, except for Oxford and Cambridge,
which would open up to women only in 1870.

•Dublin had its own college > it did not have sufficient "prestige" in the eye of ontemporary (English) men of culture. So,
to be considered as proper men of culture, almost all Irish intellectuals moved to England, to study in one or the other
most acknowledged, popular and worthy instítutions of Culture (Oxford, Cambridge, Eton). Men of intellect need to
acquire a "passport" to be accepted in a deeply English-oriented society.

It was in Oxford that Wilde started his own personal path, choosing to put a mask on himself, impersonating Englishness
pushed at its utmost excess to affirm his Irishness > filter of irony and paradox to maintain his own identity through the mask
of being perfectly English.

It was in prison, condemned by the very same society admiring him and worshipping his unprejudiced attitude, that he
got to the end of that path. He unmasked the social relationship mechanisms in revealing the intimate essence of the
individual. So he used a strategy showing his own identity to get through these indecent conditions.

In order to state his deeply Irish identity, imbued with Irish values and characteristics, Wilde chose to show off the mirror image
of the "other" behaviour, playing the part of the more-than-perfect English gentleman. England was the absolute parameter to
confront with for the whole Empire of Her Majesty. Its values were an example on which every citizen's behaviour should be
modelled.

Wilde would consciously undertook the way of paroxysm to show that an Irish man fully becomes aware of his Country only
when at a distance from it > seeing it from a distance he can focus on its most connotative characteristics, which make himself
what he actually is. He also used paradoxes to show English society what it really was, and to make it laugh at itself without
realizing it. So, paradox was a double weapon, towards the Irish to show that they could be more English than English
themselves if they wanted to. On the other way, he used paradox to introduce himself into the English society because it was
their own weapon, this was the E. attitude towards themselves.
In a way, Wilde was an outcast among his own fellow-men, an outsider rooted in the land which rules he wants to unhinge.
Like his most powerful weapon, paradox, he would not exist without that land and those rules > it is only through
comparison that he could point at differences and similarities characterizing two people that exist in mirroring each other.

Yeats would say Wilde adopted a cunning strategy, playing the Irish man incognito, whose only weapon against English
prejudice was to become "more English than the English hemselves".

Characters bring to light frailties and superficialities of Victorian conventions and prejudices> “Victorian compromise",
founded on appearance of values, not on their substance. Wilde puts a mask on himself to unmask the social
relationship mechanism. In this case Wilde uses both paradox and irony in a very witty way. He plays the part of the
more than perfect English gentleman, but he is actually micking his society. He uses paradoxes to show English society
what it really is and to make it laugh at itself without realizing it.
Paradox is used at 2 levels :
. at a verbal level in the speech of his characters
. at a dramatic level because in the story all situations turn up to be slightly different from what the audience would
expect.
He embellishes the society he depicts with a stylistic perfection in costumes and language full of exquisite English,
epigrams and bon mots.

Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, it was decried as immoral. In
revising the text the following year, Wilde included a preface, which serves as a useful explanation of his philosophy of art. The
purpose of art, according to this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order to understand this claim fully, one needs to
consider the moral climate of Wilde’s time and the Victorian sensibility regarding art and morality. The Victorians believed that
art could be used as a tool for social education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles
Dickens and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from this
responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in
Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class
—as they were by the belief that art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful.

• Wilde states what was to be read as the main principles of aestethicism.

• He expressed the attitude he applied to life and art, both as a man and as an artist.
• Oscar Wilde's preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray consists of a list of Wilde's aphorisms that deal directly with art,
artists, critics, and audience but only obliquely with the novel. They speak to the importance of beauty espoused by
the Aesthetic movement.

The preface offers one of Wilde's most famous aphorisms: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are
well written, or badly written. That is all." According to Wilde, the artist might consider the moral or immoral lives of people
as part of the subject matter of a work, but art itself is not meant to instruct the reader. The true artist is not out to prove
anything and makes no judgments of right or wrong. What people call "vices" or "virtues" are merely materials for the
artist. Those who attempt to go beneath the surface of a work, or to read meaning into a symbol, do so at their own risk.
Considerable disagreement about a work of art only proves that the work is "new, complex, and vital." To him, even if
critics disagree, the most important thing is that people talk of him.

The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty

The first principle of aestheticism, the philosophy of art by which Oscar Wilde lived, is that art serves no other purpose than to
offer beauty. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty reigns. It is a means to revitalize the wearied senses but it is also a
means of escaping the brutalities of the world: Dorian distances himself, not to mention his consciousness, from the horrors of
his actions by devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music, jewels, rare tapestries. In a society that prizes beauty so
highly, youth and physical attractiveness become valuable commodities.

The Importance of Being Earnest , A trivial comedy for serious people

Was staged in 1895, is a complex and fulfilled tragi-comedy of denied identity, which realizes its potential in the mirroring of
the self:
Earnest is a name and it is also an adjective which means to be hones, it means l-importanza di essere franco, so a person that
has a certain name but also the same attitude.
The title has itself a double menaing. It means a normal comedy for serious people, that is intensionally conscious.
Each act, each idea takes shape and get to a fulfillment only through a path of enunciation, denying and re-definition of the
starting elements > they also charge themselves with the further significance brought by the paradox through which they
develop.
If the name is the thing, the thing becomes the name identifying it: Jack, the protagonist, at the beginning is Ernest only
apparently, as he SAYS he is > he reveals he IS earnest and Ernest almost against his will, as each affirmation he makes,
confuted by the initial situation in which it is produced, ends up in proving true and authentic. The same happens with his
counterpoint, Algernon > he really is the dissolute brother he pretends to be, but at the same time he is the mirror of all
behaviours Jack "the irreprehensible" adopts when he wants to leave his country milieu to experience the typical social
conventions of London society, mundane, frivolous, apparent, witty and paradoxical.

Both characters cannot be else than what they are > the difference lies in the way people around them NAME them: In the
country, Jack is Jack , and is earnet, and Algernon becomes Ernest, still not being earnest, but desiring to change when he
meets Cecily. In town, Jack, who is not earnest, becomes Ernest, his dissolute brother, and Algernon is Algernon.
Jack becomes Ernest/earnest, Algernon cannot be named by his own name identifying him to prove he has changed. Jack
"absorbs" his alter ego to become what he really is, accepting his two-faced self; Algernon destroys his alter ego to keep his
own identity.
At the end of the play, every character turns to be what he has always professed to be, when he thought he was lying, he was
actually telling the truth.
The real Ernest, the wicked brother Ernest is eventually destroyed, as well as Banbury explodes, he is found out.
Women stick to their character up to the end of the play> Gwendolen is engaged to man NAMED Ernest *reason*, Cecily is
engaged to the man she has always loved *hearth*

The whole comedy is based on a game of couples mixing with each other and role/reversing.
 Jack and Algernon are the 2 males. They are different characters but they do behave in a similar way and they tend t
impersonate the same character
 Jack and Gwendolen, the first loving couple, they are the town couple
 Algernon and Cecily, the country couple. That is refereed to the females, because they mixed up, in fact Gwendolen is
the town girl, Cecily the contry one. While, Jack comes from the country and Algernon comes from the town. So they
mixed two different system to make the couple
 Cecily and Gwendolen, the female couple, which have a relationship at the beginning, then they have smth to keep
them distance, then we come back to the origin, when they faced that they are both engaged to unexisting person.
 Canon Bracknell and Miss Prism, the comic couple.
 Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism, the other couple which join upper classes with lower classes.
 Lane and Merryman, town vs country
 Who is Earnest? Nobody plays Earnest.
No one in the play is exactly what he says he is or believes to be. No one in the play behavesas other people would
expect him/her to do.

The work of Wilde tells of Jack Worthing, an elegant man with unknown birthplace, and his friend Algernon Moncrieff. The first
lives in the countryside together with the very young Cecily, of whom he is a guardian; the second is in town hanging around in
the living rooms (i salotti), and has a cousin that Jack likes a lot. On the other hand, he, Algernon, is intrigued by the idea of
meeting Cecily.
Jack goes to town to attend the bourgeoisie, but believing that his is not an interesting name, he introduces himself as Ernest,
willing to asking the hand of Algernon's cousin. In the meantime, the latter instead goes to the countryside to meet the
eighteen-year-old Cecily, intending to seduce her. And he introduces himself to her as Jack's younger brother.
Intrigues and confusion begin, between lies and seductions: the marriage between Jack and Gwendolen is opposed by her
mother because she learned of his uncertain births (he is a foundling) and the two girls discover that the two friends have lied
on their true identity. As in any respectable comedy, the happy ending puts everything in place: for a series of circumstances,
we will discover the true origins of Jack - whose real name is incredibly Ernest and turns out to be Algernon's brother - and the
wedding will come approved. Thanks to this reconciliation and the twist, Jack himself will smooth out the situation between
Algernon and little Cecily and the two couples will finally be able to get married.

The comedy, staged for the first time on February 14, 1895 at St James’s Theater in London, is based on a play on words
present in the English language: between the two protagonists none is completely honest (earnest), nor really Ernest. The two
terms are pronounced in the same way: Oscar Wilde delighted between the adjective earnest that speaks of reliability, and
the proper name, thus wanting to highlight the importance of appearance and form in the English society of the time, as well
as the unreliability of a name.
"Frivolous comedy for serious people": as it was defined by the same author, who uses literature to transgress, to scandalize and
contest everything of the time. From the vision of the family to education, from the hypocrisy of marriages combined to the
importance of certain uncomfortable literature. Landed aristocracy, speculation, respectability, fake decoration to be shown in
public ...
There are many ill-concealed implications of this seemingly light story, many are uncomfortable messages. But in this, we
know, Oscar Wilde was a teacher.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Jack and Algernon are wealthy gentlemen. Jack (known to Algernon as Ernest) lives a respectable life in the country providing
an example to his young ward Cecily. Algernon lives in luxury in London and has invented an imaginary invalid friend (Bunbury)
whom he visits in the country whenever an unappealing social engagement presents itself. Jack has also invented a character - a
wayward younger brother called Ernest whom he uses as pretext for going up to London and enjoying himself.
Jack wants to marry Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen, but must first convince her mother, Lady Bracknell, of the respectability of
his parents. For Jack, having been abandoned in a handbag at Victoria station, this is quite a difficult task.
Algernon visits Jack’s house in the country and introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, knowing that Cecily is already fascinated
by tales of Ernest's wickedness. He further wins her over and they become engaged. Shortly after, Jack arrives home
announcing Ernest’s death. This sets off a series of farcical events. Cecily and Gwendolen have a genteel stand-off over which of
them has a prior claim on ‘Ernest’. Jack and Algernon vie to be christened Ernest. Eventually, Jack discovers that his parents
were Lady Bracknell’s sister and brother-in-law and that he is, in fact, Algernon’s older brother, called Ernest. The two sets of
lovers are thus free to marry.
During these events the characters of Canon Chasuble and Cecily’s governess Miss Prism have also fallen in love, and in the
best tradition of the well-made play the story ends with all the loose ends tied up and everyone set to live happily ever after.

The Nature of Marriage

Marriage is of great importance in The Importance of Being Earnest, both as a primary force motivating the plot and as a subject
for philosophical speculation and debate. The question of the nature of marriage appears for the first time in the opening
dialogue between Algernon and his butler, Lane, and from this point on the subject never disappears for very long. Algernon and
Jack discuss the nature of marriage when they dispute briefly about whether a marriage proposal is a matter of “business” or
“pleasure,” and Lady Bracknell touches on the issue when she states, “An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise,
pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.” Even Lady Bracknell’s list of bachelors and the prepared interview to which she
subjects Jack are based on a set of assumptions about the nature and purpose of marriage. In general, these assumptions reflect
the conventional preoccupations of Victorian respectability—social position, income, and character.
The play is actually an ongoing debate about the nature of marriage and whether it is “pleasant or unpleasant.” Lane remarks
casually that he believes it to be “a very pleasant state,” before admitting that his own marriage, now presumably ended, was
the result of “a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.” Algernon regards Lane’s views on marriage as
“somewhat lax.” His own views are relentlessly cynical until he meets and falls in love with Cecily. Jack, by contrast, speaks in the
voice of the true romantic. He tells Algernon, however, that the truth “isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet,
refined girl.” At the end of the play, Jack apologizes to Gwendolen when he realizes he had been telling the truth all his life. She
forgives him, she says, on the grounds that she thinks he’s sure to change, which suggests Gwendolen’s own rather cynical view
of the nature of men and marriage.

The Constraints of Morality

Morality and the constraints it imposes on society is a favourite topic of conversation in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Algernon thinks the servant class has a responsibility to set a moral standard for the upper classes. Jack thinks reading a private
cigarette case is “ungentle manly.” “More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read,” Algernon points
out. These restrictions and assumptions suggest a strict code of morals that exists in Victorian society, but Wilde isn’t concerned
with questions of what is and isn’t moral. Instead, he makes fun of the whole Victorian idea of morality as a rigid body of rules
about what people should and shouldn’t do. The very title of the play is a double-edged comment on the phenomenon. The
play’s central plot—the man who both is and isn’t Ernest/earnest—presents a moral paradox. Earnestness, which refers to both
the quality of being serious and the quality of being sincere, is the play’s primary object of satire. Characters such as Jack,
Gwendolen, Miss Prism, and Dr. Chasuble, who put a premium on sobriety and honesty, are either hypocrites or else have the
rug pulled out from under them. What Wilde wants us to see as truly moral is really the opposite of earnestness: irreverence.

Hypocrisy vs. Inventiveness

Algernon and Jack may create similar deceptions, but they are not morally equivalent characters. When Jack fabricates his
brother Ernest’s death, he imposes that fantasy on his loved ones, and though we are aware of the deception, they, of course,
are not. He rounds out the deception with costumes and props, and he does his best to convince the family he’s in mourning. He
is acting hypocritically. In contrast, Algernon and Cecily make up elaborate stories that don’t really assault the truth in any
serious way or try to alter anyone else’s perception of reality. In a sense, Algernon and Cecily are characters after Wilde’s own
heart, since in a way they invent life for themselves as though life is a work of art. In some ways, Algernon, not Jack, is the play’s
real hero. Not only is Algernon like Wilde in his dandified, exquisite wit, tastes, and priorities, but he also resembles Wilde to the
extent that his fictions and inventions resemble those of an artist.

The Importance of Not Being “Earnest”

Earnestness, which implies seriousness or sincerity, is the great enemy of morality in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Earnestness can take many forms, including boringness, solemnity, pomposity, complacency, smugness, self-righteousness, and
sense of duty, all of which Wilde saw as hallmarks of the Victorian character. When characters in the play use the word serious,
they tend to mean “trivial,” and vice versa. For example, Algernon thinks it “shallow” for people not to be “serious” about meals,
and Gwendolen believes, “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.”
For Wilde, the word earnest comprised two different but related ideas: the notion of false truth and the notion of false morality,
or moralism. The moralism of Victorian society—its smugness and pomposity—impels Algernon and Jack to invent fictitious alter
egos so as to be able to escape the strictures of propriety and decency. However, what one member of society considers decent
or indecent doesn’t always reflect what decency really is. One of the play’s paradoxes is the impossibility of actually being either
earnest (meaning “serious” or “sincere”) or moral while claiming to be so. The characters who embrace triviality and wickedness
are the ones who may have the greatest chance of attaining seriousness and virtue.

The Dandy
Wilde lived the double role of rebel and dandy. Unlike the bohemian whon allies himself to the urban proletariat, the dandy is a
bourgeois artist who remains a member of his class. He is an aristocratic whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his
spirit. He uses his wit to shock and he is an individualist who demands absolute freedom. Life was meant for pleasure and
pleasure was an indulgence in beauty, so Wilde-s main interests were beautiful clothes, good conversation, delicious food and
handsome boys.

The Dandy he introduced in An Ideal Husbandbecomes now a winning social type. He seems frivolous and vacuous, he delights
his audience with his language and his style. He is a confectioner of new and impressive epigrams that give the audience a clue
to the real meaning of the play.

An Ideal Husband
Act I – The play opens during a dinner party at the home of Sir Robert Chiltern in London's fashionable Grosvenor Square. Sir
Robert, an esteemed member of the House of Commons, and his wife, Lady Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his
friend Lord Goring, a dandified bachelor and close friend to the Chilterns, Mabel Chiltern, and other genteel guests. During the
party, Mrs. Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern from their school days, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a
fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Apparently, Mrs. Cheveley's late mentor and lover, Baron Arnheim, induced the
young Sir Robert to sell him a Cabinet secret - which enabled Arnheim to buy shares in the Suez Canal Company three days
before the British government announced its purchase of the company. Arnheim's payoff was the basis of Sir Robert's fortune,
and Mrs. Cheveley has Robert's letter to Arnheim as proof of his crime. Fearing the ruin of both career and marriage, Sir Robert
submits to her demands.
When Mrs. Cheveley pointedly informs Lady Chiltern of Sir Robert's change of heart regarding the canal scheme, the morally
inflexible Lady Chiltern, unaware of both her husband's past and the blackmail plot, insists that Sir Robert renege on his promise
to Mrs. Chevely. For Lady Chiltern, their marriage is predicated on her having an "ideal husband"—that is, a model spouse in
both private and public life whom she can worship; thus, Sir Robert must remain unimpeachable in all his decisions. Sir Robert
complies with the lady's wishes and apparently seals his doom. Also toward the end of Act I, Mabel and Lord Goring come upon
a diamond brooch that Lord Goring gave someone many years ago. Goring takes the brooch and asks that Mabel inform him if
anyone comes to retrieve it.
Act II – In the second act, which also takes place at Sir Robert's house, Lord Goring urges Sir Robert to fight Mrs. Cheveley and
admit his guilt to his wife. He also reveals that he and Mrs. Cheveley were formerly engaged. After finishing his conversation with
Sir Robert, Goring engages in flirtatious banter with Mabel. He also takes Lady Chiltern aside and obliquely urges her to be less
morally inflexible and more forgiving. Once Goring leaves, Mrs. Cheveley appears, unexpected, in search of a brooch she lost the
previous evening. Incensed at Sir Robert's reneging on his promise, she ultimately exposes Sir Robert to his wife once they are
both in the room. Unable to accept a Sir Robert now unmasked, Lady Chiltern then denounces her husband and refuses to
forgive him.
Act III – In the third act, set in Lord Goring's home, Goring receives a pink letter from Lady Chiltern asking for his help, a letter
that might be read as a compromising love note. Just as Goring receives this note, however, his father, Lord Caversham, drops in
and demands to know when his son will marry. A visit from Sir Robert, who seeks further counsel from Goring, follows.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Cheveley arrives unexpectedly and, misrecognised by the butler as the woman Goring awaits, is ushered into
Lord Goring's drawing room. While she waits, she finds Lady Chiltern's letter. Ultimately, Sir Robert discovers Mrs. Cheveley in
the drawing room and, convinced of an affair between these two former lovers, angrily storms out of the house.
When she and Lord Goring confront each other, Mrs. Cheveley makes a proposal. Claiming to still love Goring from their early
days of courtship, she offers to exchange Sir Robert's letter for her old beau's hand in marriage. Lord Goring declines, accusing
her of defiling love by reducing courtship to a vulgar transaction and ruining the Chilterns' marriage. He then springs his trap.
Removing the diamond brooch from his desk drawer, he binds it to Cheveley's wrist with a hidden lock. Goring then reveals how
the item came into her possession. Apparently Mrs. Cheveley stole it from his cousin, Mary Berkshire, years ago. To avoid arrest,
Cheveley must trade the incriminating letter for her release from the bejewelled handcuff. After Goring obtains and burns the
letter, however, Mrs. Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vengefully she plans to send it to Sir Robert
misconstrued as a love letter addressed to Goring. Mrs. Cheveley exits the house in triumph.
Act IV – The final act, which returns to Grosvenor Square, resolves the many plot complications sketched above with a decidedly
happy ending. Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted by Mabel. Lord Caversham informs his son that Sir Robert has
denounced the Argentine canal scheme before the House. Lady Chiltern then appears, and Lord Goring informs her that Sir
Robert's letter has been destroyed but that Mrs. Cheveley has stolen her note and plans to use it to destroy her marriage. At
that moment, Sir Robert enters while reading Lady Chiltern's letter, but as the letter does not have the name of the addressee,
he assumes it is meant for him, and reads it as a letter of forgiveness. The two reconcile. Lady Chiltern initially agrees to support
Sir Robert's decision to renounce his career in politics, but Lord Goring dissuades her from allowing her husband to resign. When
Sir Robert refuses Lord Goring his sister's hand in marriage, still believing he has taken up with Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern is
forced to explain last night's events and the true nature of the letter. Sir Robert relents, and Lord Goring and Mabel are
permitted to wed.

Marriage
As the title might suggest, An Ideal Husband's primary theme is marriage, a common premise for the potboiler melodramas of
Wilde's day. To recall our discussion of the play's Context, the Victorian popular theater provided stock storylines of domestic life
that, after various crises, would culminate in the reaffirmation of familiar themes: loyalty, sacrifice, undying love, forgiveness,
devotion, and onward. More often than not, this reaffirmation also involved the re-establishment of the conjugal household.
Though An Ideal Husband adopts these motifs, it also mocks, parodies, and ironizes them with its more decadent and dandified
characters. Thus we can organize the play's treatment of marriage according to the "poles" these characters might represent.
Lady Chiltern, for example, would predicate marital life on worship, posing her husband as a pristine ideal in both public and
private life. Notably this love is explicitly gendered as "feminine." As the play progresses, Lady Chiltern's love comes to appear
unreasonable and—once Sir Robert's secret sin is revealed—dangerous to the health of the domestic household. This opinion
emerges most explicitly from Sir Robert and Lord Goring, who offer a competing model of marital love that the two identify as
"masculine." If a woman loves in the worship of an impossible ideal, a man loves his partner for its human imperfections; his love
includes charity and forgiveness whereas the woman's does not.
Thus the play calls for the tempering of the woman's overly idealizing and morally rigid love for one that can pardon human
fault. Somewhat paradoxically (but all too unexpectedly), it will ultimately assign the role of pardoner to the woman; as Lord
Goring tells Lady Chiltern in Act IV, "Pardon, not punishment, is [women's] mission" in love. Thus the play, miming a
conventional narrative arc of the Victorian popular theater, in some sense ruins the ideal husband only to win his forgiveness
from his virtuous wife. Re-establishing the conjugal household, this resolution numbers among the more sentimental and
conservative of Wilde's day. Obviously, its gender politics are unfortunate to say the least.
The main obstacle to this reconciliation of married life, Mrs. Cheveley, the play's villainness, would subordinate and reduce to
marriage to mercenary transactions. Schooled in Baron Arnheim's gospels of power and wealth—gospels that privilege the
domination of others over all else—she has no qualms blackmailing Sir Robert and potentially destroying his conjugal bliss to
secure her financial investments. Moreover, we come to learn that she engineered a false courtship with Lord Goring in their
youth to swindle him out of a settlement. Finally, she will offer to exchange her evidence against Sir Robert for Goring's hand in
marriage; Goring will then roundly condemn her for defiling the ideas of love detailed above. With these offenses in mind, Mrs.
Cheveley's ultimate capture by a stolen wedding present—the diamond brooch—would revenge her crimes against marriage.
In contrast to both the Chilterns and Mrs. Cheveley, however, the play features a number of characters and conversations—
especially those involving "banter" and other apparently frivolous speech—that mock its more conventional thematics. In
particular, Goring and Mabel Chiltern function as foils to the upstanding Chilterns. Throughout the play the pair assume an
amoral pose, disparaging the demands of duty and ironizing social convention. Notably then do the penultimate lines of the play,
spoken by Mabel Chiltern upon accepting Goring's proposal, dispense with the notion of ideal husband altogether. "An ideal
husband!" she exclaims. "Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world." Goring is to be what he
wants while Mabel would only be a "real wife." In this sense, Mabel and Goring playfully reject the moral thematics described
above, unconcerned with the question of what a man and wife should be ideally.

Womanliness and the Feminine

Though the title invites speculation on the ideal husband, different figures of womanliness appear throughout the play as well.
Once again, we will consider this thematic structure by contrasting a few principle characters. An Ideal Husband relies on a
simple opposition between the virtuous Lady Chiltern and the demonic Mrs. Cheveley, the latter's wit and villainy making her a
far more pleasurable character. Lady Chiltern appears as the model Victorian new woman, which Wilde elaborated while editor
of the Women's World magazine in the late 1880s: morally upstanding, highly educated, and actively supportive of her
husband's political career. By Act IV, she will also emerge in the role of forgiver and caretaker (again, "Pardon, not punishment,
is [women's] mission"), and thus meets the more conventional demands of Victorian womanhood as well. In terms of
generational differences, she stands out against the old-fashioned Lady Markby, the embodiment of an older group of society
wives.
Lady Chiltern's primary foil, however, is of course the "lamia-like"—that is, half-snake and half-female—Mrs. Cheveley. Whereas
Lady Chiltern is naïve, candid, and always in earnest, the witty and ambitious Mrs. Cheveley is characterized by a sort of
duplicitous femininity. As described in Act I, she is a "horrid," "unnatural," and—as quickly revealed— dangerous combination of
genius and beauty. Having revealed her capacity to manipulate in Act I, the play dramatically unmasks her as a monster in Act III.
Trapped by Lord Goring, Cheveley dissolves into a "paroxysm of rage, with inarticulate sounds," her loss of speech giving way to
an agony of terror that distorts her face. For a moment, a "mask has fallen", and Cheveley is "dreadful to look at." Her veneer of
wit and beauty thus give way to the hidden beast.
We should also note that the play relates Mrs. Cheveley's duplicity with the artifices of the dandy, Lord Goring. Like Cheveley,
Goring is artificial, amoral, cunning, and irrational, traits associated with the feminine. The two great wits and most flamboyantly
dressed characters of the play, Goring and Cheveley are doubles for each other: their face-off is something of a climax. Indeed,
Goring is Mrs. Cheveley's only match because he can play her game of wiles, just as the Chilterns are doomed to be her victims in
their hapless earnestness. Notably, it also takes little for Sir Robert to conclude that they are co-conspirators.
With these parallels in mind, one might thus note that Goring might share an unnatural or monstrous femininity with Cheveley
as well: the dandy is, after all, often considered the paragon of the effeminate male. The important difference, however, lies in
Mrs. Cheveley's unmasking. If Mrs. Cheveley's mask is ultimately torn aside—in an echo, perhaps, of Dorian Gray—to reveal her
cruelty and ambition, Goring largely keeps his on, maintaining his dandified pose for most of the play.

Aestheticism and the Art of Living

Comments on what Mrs. Cheveley at one point describes as the "fine art" of living run throughout the play. The dandified Lord
Goring of course exemplifies this stylization of life as art, emphasizing the beauty of youth and artifice, the importance of
idleness, fashion, and social theatricality, and the ironization of existing social conventions. Once again, we can pose the fine art
of living against the sober respectability and moral strictures of the Victorian age.

An Ideal Husband (1895)

It is Wilde-s third and most successful society drama in which he concentrates all the main aspects of the Victorian society>

 Respectability
 Appearance
 Sobriety

and a Stronge sentiment of belonging to the British culture and civilization.

He has been able to paint a detailed picture of contemporary society through an intelligent use of irony, and it-s so intelligent
that the objects of his observation did not realize he was mocking them.
Under the apparent lightness of the play there is a strong and well built social critic attitude. It is not a judgement but a clever
awareness of the state of the things.
He has surpassed both his models and the limits of aestheticism he had set imbuing his works of Art with social consciousness
and paradoxical engagement.

Wilde uses all Victorian theatrical dichés (husband with a secret, loving wife, woman with a past, hatred between the two
women, scandal,...) in a totally new perspective. He uses the foreign models of French playwrights. He endows the society he
depicts with a stylistic perfection in costumes and language > exquisite English, epigrams, bon-mots, paradoxes.

Paradox > a statement which has the reassuring rhythm of a proverb, but gets to a subversive conclusion. Wilde uses this
device at two levels:

• At a verbal level > in the words of his characters, to amuse the audience
• At a dramatic level > he brings paradox into the story > all situations turn up to be slightly different from what the
audience would expect.

Under the apparent lightness of the play, there is a strog social critic attitude > no judgement, but a clear awareness of the
state of things- and maybe some advice. The audience feels being invited to an exclusive party and us easily led to be identify
itself with the characters.
He pays a lot of attention to details in building the scene and designing costumes. In this way he makes his text readable, fir
example in the elaborate toiletts commented on by the papers.

CHARACTERS:
Sir Robert and his wife ~ she overestimates her husband and she is on the point of ruining him and losing his love.
Sir Robert obeys to his wife-s wishes, postponing his career and happiness to her desire. He points out that it-s up to women to
build up a man-s life. One can only love imperfect things and men are imperfect NOT ideal, he denies husband to be ideal.

The Critic as Artist

Here Oscar Wilde made it a point to present the aesthetic philosophy in a dialogue between the two characters – Gilbert and
Ernest. Gilbert lets Ernest know that in reality, true art only derives from criticism – that critical thought is directed by the soul
as well as in the aesthetic sense. Ernest asks questions to Gilbert and so, Gilbert seems like he is Wilde’s representative for his
philosophy of criticism.

The essay sets to collapse the distinction between fine art and criticism cherished by artists and critics such as Matthew
Arnold. Only critical faculty enables any artistic creation at all, while criticism is independent of the object it criticises and not
necessarily subject to it. The essay champions a contemplative life to the life of action. Critical contemplation is guided by
conscious aesthetic sense as well as by the soul. The soul is wiser than we are, writes Wild. Criticism is above reason, sincerity
and fairness; it is necessarily subjective. It is criticism rather than emotional sympathies, abstract ethics or commercial
advantages that would make us cosmopolitan and serve as the basis of peace.

Some ideas of the play will occur again in The Importance of Being Ernest:
 The dressing scene of Lord Goring, assisted by his butler, anticipates the equivalent performed by Algernon.
 The dialogues between Lord Goring and his father anticipate some of the paradoxical dialogues in the next play
 The scenes between Mabel and Lord Goring anticipate some dialogues between Ernest and Gwendolyn and Algernon
and Cecily.

Conclusions
Wilde faced the most important social themes of the time showing their superficial importance>
Victorian compromise
Politics
Religion
Social position
Love
Family
Women-s engagement
Importance of telling and concealing the truth
Confidence
Fashion and style