the victorian age

the hanoverian
1. george the I, II
2. george the III (50 years of reign) who lost the colony in america
george the IV his father had porfiria and he lost his mind, period of ‘ the Regency’ he reign with his
father
→ he was interested in art and he build the royal pavilion (palazzo in stile indiano) and it was called by the british
the ‘ turnip’
3. William IV and a third brother who died
4. then Victoria (real name alexandra) she became queen when she was 18 yo (niece of William)
she reigned for 64 years
she was born in 1837 and she died 1901
the victorian age is the most important age for England ‘cause it was the richest, powerful of the world ( ¼ of
land and ⅕ of people were British)
in England in this period invented
1. the spinning wheel
2. railway by stevenson
the cristian faith were linked with the british empire

Victoria
in 1837 Victoria (alexandra) ascended to the throne at the age of 18
→ she was inexperienced at first but found support in the Prime minister Lord Melbourne
she married quite young in 1840 for love
she married Prince Albert he was from Belgium→ title of prince Consort
she asked to him to married because she was the queen
→ they had 9 children, 3 died before Victoria ‘ Victoria outlive of his children’
she called the grandma of the Europe, she restored the reputation of the royal family
she was succeeded with hi son Eduard VII
at 42 years old Albert died of typhoid→ she rest in black for 30 years
she refuse to met everyone and she dedicated a monument for his husband in London
she hadn’t so much political power because the parliament
with the Industrial revolution Britain became the ‘ workshop of the world’
the nation’s growing prosperity was accompanied by increasing urban poverty and social injustice
there were 3 reform bills
1. in 1832 the possibility to men vote according to census
2. in 1867 everybody who read and write could vote
3. in 1884 every old men could vote
during the Victorian Age the whigs evolved into the Liberal Party and the tories became the conservative party
● Gladstone was prime minister four times, he attempted to give ireland Home rule but he failed
● Disraeli had Victoria crowned ‘Empress of the India ‘, he was also responsible for the Second Reform
Bill
in 1892 the Independent Labour Party was formed
another important events
● 1844 the factory act i says that the children under 9 yo can’t work in the factory
children were exploited they worked in the mine
● 1845-1847 in Ireland there were famine caused by a failure of the potato crop among a population
→ they migrated to USA and many people starve to death
● ‘the opium wars’ in 1840 the chinese government attempted to put an end to the east india company’s
illegal exportation of opium from india to china
the British won the war, and they won Honk Kong and Shanghai
● 1851 prince Albert decide to have a world exhibition they build the crystal palace were they shown all
the product of their colonies like an expo
it was huge success
● in 1854-1856 there was the crimean war, it was fought by britain in alliance with france to halt the advance of the
russia → britain feared that russia might threaten turkish control of the dardanelles
at the battle of balaklava, all the soldiers were killed
 the terrible reality of war prompted Florence Nightingale to go to Crimea to nurse the soldier →invented
nurse
→ she started to clean the street, open the window and the mortality range growing down
● they invented the flushing toilet, and public toilet, the phone, the street light
● In 1857 the Indian mutiny started for the refusal to touch the suet (strutto) of cartridge (cartucce del
fucile) (per gli indiani is called ‘independence war'). The revolt was quickly suppressed and in 1857 the
British Government took over rule from the east india company
● 1863 in january the metropolitan railway was opened as the first underground railway
● in 1867 the creation of the first dominion status of Canada apart of commonwealth, then australia and
new zealand
● in 1875 the trade unions (sindacati)
also the british government bought the majority of shares of the suez canal
● 1876 the prime ministers decide that queen victoria need a new name
Victoria became ‘Empress of India’ india was the jewellery of her crown
● 1882 the British invaded and conquered Egypt ostensibly to put down a revolt of Egyptian army
● 1891 primary education became free
● from 1899-1902 Britain was at war with the south African province of orange and transvaal
Britain had occupied the cape during the napoleonic wars and had taken complete control after the
congress of vienna
→ many of the boers had moved to the north to establish two independent republics
when the republics were found to be rich in diamonds and gold the Boers declared war
→ britain supremacy over the 2 republics
the years of optimism = the victorian considered the Britain the only region , they were convinced of their
superiority
→ Kipling wrote the ‘white man's burden’ was export the language, culture and traditions
the victorian compromise = the society respected a strict,puritanical moral code.
it had a darker side like prostitution,gambling and the use of drugs like opium
the feminist question = for most of victoria’s reign, women were educated to be good wives and mothers
→ in the second of the half of 19th century the mood began to change
women began to emerge as a political force and the first femminist bega to campaign for the
vote
social darwinism = affirmed that life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by ‘survival of the
fittest’
Herbert spencer affirmed that inequality and poverty were natural

america : an expanding nation

In the 19th century, after the American revolution looked to expand its territory
→ millions of immigrants arrived in America and moved towards the new territories of the west
The nation gradually acquired new territories from France and Spain.
A war with Mexico brought Texas, California and New Mexico into the United States
The discovery of gold in California in 1848 attracted growing numbers of pioneers and the country began to
prosper.
North and South
The economy of the northern states modernised rapidly→ small farms based on free labour and growing industry. The
South was based on plantations, producing sugar, cotton, tobacco and rice and relying on slave labour.
As slavery began to expand and many Northerners came to believe that slavery should be abolished.
A network, known as the 'underground raiload’ emerged, helping slaves to find their freedom by escaping to
the northern states or to Canada.
● 1861-1865 Slivery became a dominant issue and created tension between the North and the South
When Abraham Lincoln candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party was elected president in 1860,
delegates of the Southern 'seceded'
→they created an independent government of the 'Confederate States of America' with Jefferson Davis
Lincoln's government declared the Confederacy illegitimate, and attack on Fort Sumter in South
Carolina in April 1861 marked the start of a bloody Civil War
● 1866 Newly freed slaves found themselves in a hostile environment and many emigrated to the North.
Many Southerners joined the Ku Klux Klan to resist equality for the blacks and to restore white control
 ● After the Civil War ended in 1865, thousands of settlers moved West to the Great plains of between the
Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains
Many who had rushed to California for gold and had been unsuccessful, settled down and became
farmers
Thousands of freed slaves fled the South to begin a new life in the Grea Plains
● The 'Gilded Age' period of peace, which saw industry flourish and immigration continue.
Steel and iron production flourished and the development of gold and silver mining led to the need for
an improved transport system.
The American railroad system developed and great fortunes
The Gilded Age also took its name from the great fortunes created and the lifestyle that this wealth
supported.

britain at the turn of the century

● 1901-1910 Edward Vll succeeded his mother,when he was 59 years old.
He had been the Prince of Wales and 'Heir Apparent' for longer than any other prince before him.
During his mother's reign he had been excluded from political power and had enjoyed a life of leisure,
travelling widely in Britain and abroad
he modernised the fleet and the army and became a popular public figure
He cultivated good relationships with other European leaders, with the exception of his nephew Emperor
Wilhelm I l of Germany.
His short reign is known as the Edwardian Age and saw significant changes in society

● 1910-1935 George V became king in May 1910 on the death of his father Edward VII
he had not expected (2 figlio) to become king but his elder brother Albert had died in 1892.

THE THIRD GREAT ERA OF REFORM Edward reign marked a period of social change and reform.
General elections brought an overwhelming victory for the Liberal Party, which remained in power until May
1915.
The Liberal Party's strong majority made the government quite independent of the support of a handful of
members of the new Labour Party, and the government passed measures designed to improve the Lives of the
working class
They included the provision of old age pensions and the adoption of a National Insurance scheme.

● 1914 The Great War breaks out The immediate cause of the Great War was the assassination of the
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Prinzip in June 1914
. This led to a diplomatic crisis throughout Europe.
Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium and Luxembourg and its march on France obliged Britain to step
in to defend Belgium and King George V declared war on Germany on 28 July 1914.
Italy entered the war on May 24, 1915, siding with the Triple Entente
The war developed into one of the bloodiest conflicts in history.
The war was marked by the horrors of trench warfare and terrible new military technology such as
tanks, machine guns and gas.
Germany was defeated one year later. At 11 o'clock in the morning on the eleventh day of the eleventh
month (11 November 1918), six hours after the Armistice was signed, a ceasefire was announced.
This was followed by the Treaty of Versailles signed in Paris on 28 June 1919, leaving empires
destroyed, national boundaries shifted and economic hardships

● Irish question 1916 The British government had promised 'Home Rule' to Ireland in the early years of
the new century, but with the outbreak of the Great War this question was postponed.
A group of rebels, led by Eamon de Valera and the Sinn Fein nationalist party, impatient with Britain and
unwilling in many cases to fight for Britain in the Great War, took decisive action.
On Easter Monday 1916 they staged the 'Easter Rising in Dublin. The rebels took control of some of the
central buildings in the capital city and unilaterally proclaimed the 'Irish Republic'.
after a week of fighting the British forces quelled the rebellions
→ Years of bloody conflict between the Irish and the British led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922
This process also led to the 'partition' of the island as the six counties of Ulster with its capital city in
Belfast chose to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Suffragettes the general elections held in 1906, with the victory of the Liberal Party
Only 60% of adult men had the right to and no women could vote.
a woman's destiny was still to marry young, stay at home and have children.
Peaceful campaigning for rights and freedom became a more aggressive approach.
The Women's Social and Political Union was formed in Manchester in 1903 known as 'suffragettes', led by
Emmeline Pankhurst.
→ They were prepared to use any militant means.
The WSPU called off its militant action during the great War whilst there was a common enemy Germany.
Women finally escaped from their domestic confines, and started to work in agriculture, transport and industry to
support the war effort while so many men were fighting in Europe. The People Act of 1918 granted voting rights
to all women over 30 who were property owners

THE FIRST WORLD WAR The road to catastrophe

The causes that led to the First World War were complex
They involved
1. the rivalry between Austria and Russia for influence in the Balkans
2. the rivalry between Britain and Germany for commercial and naval supremacy
3. the long standing animosity between France and Germany
France and Germany sought to strengthen themselves with allies, Germany forming the Triple Alliance with
AustriaHungary and Italy, and France making an alliance with Russia.
Britain prided herself on her 'Splendid Isolation' from these continental rivalries.
The German Emperor began to build up his own navy, and the British Prime Minister, Balfour, negotiated an
Entente Cordiale with France, agreeing that each country would support the other in case of attack by a third
party. The agreement became the Triple Entente in 1907, when Russia joined in.

● 1926 After the First World War Britain fell into cconontic and industrial decline
The mining industry was seriously affected
In 1926 the owners of the mines tried to solve the problem by reducing the workers' pay and increasing
their working hours.
On 1 May 1926, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), a federation representing most of the trades unions
in Britain, announced a general strike to begin at midnight on 3rd May.
million people went on strike, the transport network was paralysed and food deliveries were held up
The government intervened quickly to end the strike, recruiting 226,000 special policemen and calling in
the army.
The armed forces moved quickly to escort and protect food lorries, while volunteers got some buses
back on the roads and trains on the rails.
One week later, the TUC abandoned the struggle and its members went back to work.
The miners continued their strike alone until November, when they too admitted defeat and returned to
the mines, forced to work for less pay and longer hours,
→ The miners were defeated, the TUC was ruined and the 1927 Trade Disputes

● 1929 Britain was hit by the Great Depression which followed the Wall Street Crash in October 1929.
The United States reacted to the Depression by putting up customs barriers to stop imports of foreign
goods.
By the end of 1931 million men were unemployed, mainly in the industrial towns of the north, south
Wales and central Scotland, where the heavy industry had not modernised after the war.
At the same time the south east of England enjoyed some prosperity, leading to an increase in house
building and the purchase of domestic appliances and cars.

● The Balfour Declaration was formalised officially by the Statute of Westminster in 1931
the British Government recognised the complete independence of the self-governing Dominions and
their equality with Great Britain under the Crown.
→ India was not mentioned in the Statute
Congress fought for Dominion Status for India and Mahatma Gandhi launched a major civil
disobedience movement, which would eventually result in the complete independence of India in 1947
 The British Nationality Act of 1948 granted subjects of the British Commonwealth the right to live and
work in the UK.
Immigrants flowed into the country from the former colonies.

The rise of totalitarianism A new international political and economic system arose after the war
The Russian Tsar was executed, and a revolutionary government took over in 1917.
The trauma of the First World War and the Great
Depression led to the emergence of fascist or totalitarian political movements
Leaders such as Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany, were seen as strong dictators who could put an
end to economic depression and protect their countries from communism.
In Spain, General Francisco Franco rebelled against the democratically elected Spanish Republic and a bloody
civil war followed that ended with Franco establishing a fascist dictatorship in 1939, Italy and Germany supported
him.

● The Windsors 1936 The dynastic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was that of Victoria's husband, Prince
Albert.
In view of the anti-German atmosphere of the First World War, George V proclaimed in 1917 that all
English monarchs would adopt the surname of Windsor.
A constitutional crisis occurred in 1936 as the new king, Edward Vlll, who had succeeded his father
George V, announced his decision to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, Opposition from all
the political parties forced Edward to abdicate in favour of his younger brother, George VI.

● 1939-1940 Britain the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain was reluctant to involve the nation in another
war and did not react to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and the German annexation of Austria.
Chamberlain flew to Germany for talks with Hitler in september 1938 and was prepared to sacrifice
Czechoslovakia to Germany.
The German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 finally pushed the Prime Minister into action and
Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939
The war saw the allied powers against the Axis powers.
In April 1940, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, and in May, the weak Prime Minister
Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill.
France surrendered to Germany in June and Britain alone faced Germany and its ally Italy.
Dark days followed as the RAF battled in the skies against the German Luftwaffe. British cities were
subjected to regular night-time bombing. The war continued and spread into a global conflict, with
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 bringing the United States into the war.
After a nother long and bloody war, the Allies finally a chieved victory in Europe on 8 May 1945,
followed by victory in Japan after the atomic bombs launched on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and
Nagasaki (9 August) forced the Japanese into surrender.

Wars of unparalleled destruction Both the First and the Second World Wars involved civilians as modern aviation
brought bombing raids to the cities. More than 60,000 people were killed in the 'Blitz'. The atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed the terrifying consequences of the use of technologically-advanced weapons.
Movements of Resistance occurred in almost every occupied country and played an important part in defeating
Nazi Germany.
The French Resistance helped the Allies during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. In 1942 the Nazis decided to
rid Europe of all Jews. This gave rise to one of the greatest crimes in the history of mankind.
The Shoah was the systematic killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and of millions of others,
including Gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents.
The Nazi killing programme was carried out through the creation of death camps, where gas chambers were
used to exterminate large groups of victims at a time.
During the Nuremberg Trials, held between 1945 and 1949 to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, many Nazi
leaders were convicted of crimes against humanity and some were sentenced to death.
The post-war period and social welfare During the Second World War the economist William Beveridge had drawn up
plans to revise state recommendations of the Beveridge Report of 1942 that were implemented after the end of
the war. The slogan was welfare 'from the cradle to the grave'.
The difficult years of post-war reconstruction boldly tackled five questions:
● in 1944 the reform of schooling and a commitment to full employment; in 1945 the Family Allowances
Act
● in 1946 the National Insurance Act, which provided further financial help for the sick and unemployed
● in 1948 the National Health Service Act, creating a service with free medical treatment for everyone. At
the same time, key sectors of the economy were nationalised

america: a leading nation emerges

Industrial development and reform the United States was developing into the world's leading industrial power
Millions of immigrant workers and farmers arrived, a national rail network was completed, while mining and
factories developed in the cities of the northwest.
Aviation, industry and the cinema all developed rapidly
Much of this progress was achieved at the cost of corruption and exploitation of workers. Theodore Roosevelt,
elected in 1901, worked for reform.
→ legislation to limit the power of monopolies, established national parks to-protect the environment and regulated the
railroads.
After his recognition of the Republic of Panama, the US was able to take over the construction of the Panama
Canal.
Important radical reforms were enacted
● in 1913 the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution established the first national income tax and
direct election of US Senators to Congress
● In 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote.

The black population Not everybody shared in the civil rights and in the opportunities America offered.
→ AfricanAmerican men had been given the right to vote by the 15 th Amendment in 1870, but in reality a number of
discriminatory practices made this difficult or impossible especially in the South.
This question was finally solved in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act, which
guaranteed this democratic right.

● The First World War 1914-1918 President Wilson, was elected in 1912, led America through the first
World War.
He tried to keep the US neutral, but after Germany closed the seas to American ships, in 1917 Wilson
called on Congress to declare war on Germany.
American forces were sent to Europe in 1918, and greatly contributed to the defeat of Germany.
After the war, Wilson helped to negotiate a peace treaty that included a plan for the creation of a League
of Nations, seeking to maintain peace and cooperation between the nations of the world.
the Senate rejected US membership in the League, Wilson received the Nobel Prize for his peace-
making efforts

The years of optimism After the war America experienced a massive economic boom and became the wealthiest
country in the world.
Americans enjoyed a period of carefree wealth, partying, music and dancing, known as 'The Roaring lent
Twenties'.
When the Republican Herbert Hoover became President in 1929, there was great optimism about the future.
The motor industry was growing rapidly and was putting all Americans 'on wheels' with his 17th spent money on
commodities such as the radio and first appliances, travel, holidays and entertainment. The cinema industry was
also developing fast.

● Optimism and prosperity came to a sudden end with the Wall Street Crash in 1929.
Economists give various causes for the Depression, including overproduction of goods, bank failures,
bank speculation and consumer debts a series of dust storms that greatly damaged agriculture forced
thousands of agricultural labourers to migrate
 ● The New Deal 1932 The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 brought an upturn in the American
economy.
His policy of greater state intervention in the private and public sectors helped improve things. This 'New
Deal' policy placed regulations on the stock market, banks and business.
It created employment in public works, offered assistance to the poor, the unemployed and farmers and
repealed the Prohibition Act of 1920, which had made the production, sale and consumption of alcoholic
drinks illegal.

● 1939-1945
The Second World War broke out in 1939. The United States entered the war in 1941 after the
provocation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
Eisenhower was assigned command in the West and MacArthur in the Far East.
Two decisive turning points occurred when the allied forces invaded Sicily (1943), and landed on the
Normandy coast (D-Day: 6 June 1944).
War ended in 1945, but Japan refused to accept the Allies' demand for unconditional surrender. On 6th
August Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and, on the 9th, of Nagasaki.
war was to bring prosperity in America as industrial production was accelerated and science was put in
the service of military technology, with the creation and the first use of the most terrible weapon of mass
destruction that mankind had ever seen the atomic bomb, used in the destruction of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

● The Marshall Plan 1948 By the end of the war Europe was devastated.
Millions of people had been killed or wounded. Industry and agriculture were in ruins.
In 1948 President Truman set up the Marshall Plan
→ known as the European Recovery Program
The plan was intended to rebuild the economies of western Europe primarily, and also to prevent the
spread of communism in that region.

The post-war world the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union changed, especially after the communist
seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in 1948.
The prospect of further communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); in 1949.
The Soviet Union and its affiliated nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.
Nearly all European nations aligned into one of the opposing camps. This alignment continued throughout the the
nonviolent conflict that characterised the relationship between US and URSS

britain after 1947

● Indian Independence and the Partition of India 1947
India finally won independence from Britain and was divided into two separate states:
India with a Hindu majority and Pakistan with a Muslim majority.
New boundaries were drawn up with little knowledge of Indian conditions and the 'Partition' brought the
largest mass migration in history.
In January 1948 the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic encouraged the formation of
a 'secular' or non-religious government.

● 1952 Elizabeth II became the queen when her father died on 6/2/1952
→ during her reign the british empire evolved into the british commonwealth

● The Suez Crisis in 1956 Egyptian President Nasser nationalised the Anglo-French-run Suez Canal.
The British Prime Minister, Eden, wanted to take military action to restore British influence in the region
but was prevented by the US. Britain and France were forced to withdraw their troops and left the Canal
in Egyptian hands.
The British mandate in Palestine came to an end in 1948 and withdrawal of British troops led to a
partition of the country with the creation of the independent state of Israel, on 14th May

● creation of the european economic community

 Under Winston Churchill's guidance Britain was a founder member of the council of europe but the
treaty of Rome created the EEC in 1957
after 3 applications in 1973 britain joined the EEC

MULTICULTURAL BRITAIN. In the 1950s almost a quarter of the world's population in the Commonwealth nations held
British passports and the right to live in Britain.
Immigrants from the West Indies and from Asia were initially welcomed as cheap labour; thousands of Irish and
West Indian nurses found employment in the National Health Service;
Asians expelled from Uganda and Kenya flooded into Britain.
Britain became a multicultural society, the racial tension emerged and the growth of ethnic ghettos in
depressed industrial cities led to episodes of intolerance and racism whose effects are still felt today.

● 1970 Continuity of the Welfare State

After the 2 World War Attlee's newly elected Labour Party had set up the Welfare State, introducing a
national health service, social security, free education, council housing and a commitment for
employment for all.
At the same time, key sectors of the economy had been nationalised.
Acts were passed to ensure equality between the sexes, such as the Equal Pay Act and the Sex
Discrimination Act, the Race Relations Act sought to check racist discrimination in a society that was
becoming increasingly multi-ethnic.

● 1979 The Iron Lady and Conservatives

The Seventies were times of economic decline and rising unemployment. Britain entered into recession
in the early Eighties and after the 'winter of discontent' in 1979, the Conservatives came into power
under the strong leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The 'Iron Lady' as she was called, tackled the Trade
Unions, privatised national industries and cut down on state benefits.
In 1982 Britain fought and won a bloody war over the sovereignty of the Falkland
The war stimulated national pride and the 'Falklands Factor' helped Margaret Thatcher to win re-election
in 1983.
The Iron Lady resigned as Prime Minister in 1990, having lost the support of her own party over local
taxation and her hostility towards Europe.

● 1994 Tony Blair and 'New Labour'

In July Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party He shifted the party from its left-wing socialist
position to a 'centre-left' stance and used the name 'New Labour' to distance the party from its past. In
1997 Labour under Tony Blair, won a landslide victory in the general election. Blair's government carried
out a programme of devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament. the national Assembly for Wales
and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Continuity in an age of Queen Elizabeth II Throughout times of difficulty queen Elizabeth has remained a popular figure in
Britain.
Her Silver Jubilee in 1977 saw the entire nation involved in street parties celebrating the first 25 years of her
reign.
Tragedy followed in August 1997 when Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris
THE SIXTIES AND YOUTH CULTURE The Sixties were years of great optimism. The standard of living improved for wide
sections of society. Car ownership grew and the new motorway system gave a new freedom to travel
In the Fifties young people were beginning to turn away from adult models and to create new cultural
expressions.
In England the Teddy boys wore Edwardian clothing, formed gangs and listened to rock and roll music. The
early Sixties saw the emergence of the mods and rockers. Later on the hippies, who wore long hair and
advocated peace and love, took hallucinatory drugs and found inspiration in eastern philosophies. In the late
Sixties and early Seventies youth culture was against war in general and the war in Vietnam in particular, and
challenged government policies with demonstrations and sit-ins.
 The cold war
After the Second World War international politics were dominated by the Cold War, a state of political tension
between the Western powers, and the Eastern power.
Polarisation between the two blocs was accentuated in 1961-62 with the building of the Berlin Wall, which divided
Berlin into the Eastern and Western blocs.
The US pursued a policy of 'containment' to fight Communism anytime and any place it occurred.
Cold War tension also fed domestic anticommunism.
This was a time of irrational anti-communist led by McCarthy, who tried to discover communists, bring them to
trial and punish them.
He had a list of people whom he accused of anti-American

● The Korean War 1945-1953 American military intervention in Korea and Vietnam was part of the
containment policy which sought to limit the spread of communism in southeast Asia.
Korea was divided into Soviet-occupied North Korea and American-occupied South Korea.
In 1948 both zones formed governments: the Republic of Korea in the south and the People's
Democratic Republic of Korea in the north.
Tensions exploded in 1950 when North Korean troops invaded South Korea.
The United Nations immediately condemned this act of aggression and Truman sent US troops to Korea
to fight alongside members of other United Nations forces.
After four months of fighting the North Koreans back, the tables turned rapidly when China entered the
conflict alongside north
The unpopularity of the war led to the election of Eisenhower, who promised to bring the conflict to an
end. The war finally ended in July 1953

● 1955-1973 The Vietnam War was a long conflict which set the Communist regime in north Vietnam,
supported by the Soviet Union and China, against South Vietnam, supported by the United States.
In 1955 Eisenhower promised military equipment and advisors to the anti-communist forces in South
Vietnam.
In Vietnam there were half a million American soldiers engaged
Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon (1969-74), attempted to reduce the number of American ground
troops in Vietnam while increasing American bomb attacks.
Protest in America grew ever stronger and the Vietnam War split American public opinion
A large number of soldiers deserted and became 'draft dodgers'.
in January 1973, the US and North Vietnam signed a peace treaty ending
→ leaving Vietnam under the control of the communist forces.
In 1975 South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam and the country was reunited as the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

● 1961 In January, Kennedy became the 35th American president.

'New Frontier' programme included plans to extend economic benefits to all, increase federal aid to
education and provide health insurance for the elderly.
He tackled the problem of civil rights and worked for equality for black people.
His brief term of office, brutally terminated by his assassination in November 1963, was marked by
significant geopolitical problems including the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban
crisis of the same year.

● 1962 In 1961 a group of Cuban exiles, supported and trained by the US, landed at the Bay of Pigs on
the south coast of Cuba, hoping to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist regime.
The failure of this badly planned invasion led to anti-US demonstrations in South America and Europe
and to the criticism of President Kennedy.
Cuba had installed Soviet nuclear missiles on the island, 90 miles away from the American coast.
Kennedy announced a naval blockade to stop Soviet ships reaching Cuba and threatened to use
military force if necessary
For 13 days in October 1962 the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. Talks were held between
President Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Khrushchev, who agreed to remove the Soviet missiles from
Cuba in exchange for an American promise not to invade the island.
 ● 1965 In the US black people occupied the worst jobs in society and segregation was still a reality in the
Southern States.
In 1957, Martin Luther King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight for civil
rights
On 28 March 1965, following a five-day voting march led by King from Selma to the state capital of
Montgomery, peaceful participants were attacked by Alabama state troopers with sticks, whips and tear
gas.
Johnson called for federal legislation and in August 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act,
guaranteeing voting rights for all black Americans.
Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Texas, in 1968.

● The space race 1969

In October 1957 the USSR launched the world's first artificial satellite, 'Sputnik'.
The US launched its own satellite, 'Explorer l', in 1958. In the same year President Eisenhower created
NASA. In April 1961 the Soviet cosmonaut, Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. On 16
July 1969, three American astronauts set off on the 'Apollo 11' space mission. 'Apollo 11' landed on the
Moon and on 20 July Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.

Advance in technology During the 1950s television became the dominant medium for both news and entertainment.
The Digital Revolution began in the latter half of the 20th century. Central to this revolution was the mass
production of digital logic circuits and its derived technologies: the computer, the mobile phone and the Internet.

Literary background = the age of fiction

The Victorian Age represents one of the most productive, rich and controversial periods
The main genre of the Victorian Age was the novel, perfectly embodied the moral values, the religious beliefs and
the many contradictions of the period.
Victorian Age literary production was pervaded by two main trends:
1. Victorian Compromise. The authors belonging to this phase aimed to instruct and entertain their readers
without bitterly criticising the world they belonged to. characterised by man's belief in the scientific
progress, of human nature and of social and economic development.
characterised by the attempt to combine a realistic representation of the problems of society
2. Anti-Victorian reaction writers belonging to this phase strongly criticised the values of their era and
exposed all of its contradictions.
This trend was influenced both by the spread of Darwin's evolutionary theories; which redefined the role
of man in the universe and changed the relationship between man and animal, realism.
Realistic writers were deeply influenced by Positivism: they tended to see life from a pessimistic point of
view and aimed at representing it in an objective and non idealised way.
The triumph of the novel. are several reasons to explain the triumph of the novel as the leading literary genre of
Victorian Age:
● More people were able to read;
● the number of people who could afford to buy them increased in the 19th' century;
● people could borrow books 'circulating libraries'
● novels were particularly appreciated by 19th century readers
● novels were easily portable objects and could be read basically anywhere
● novels were often published in instalments in newspapers the episodic quality of their structure made
them extremely popular and engaging,
all Victorian novels are characterised by the following common features:
● novels tend to satisfy the needs of their readers, who want to be entertained
● authors often see themselves as being entitled to make their readers reflect on the incongruences and
complexities of the world in which they live
● novels have a clear moral aim and writers need to be exemplars of virtue in their public life;
● novels represent human conditions in a realistic way; plots are complex, usually adventurous, rich in
characters, unexpected events, surprises and subplots
● Stories are usually told a 3rd person omniscient narrator
The first phase of Victorian literature included the works of writers who made a realistic portrait of the society in
which they lived.
Many of them set their novels in the city of London, which gave them the chance to represent all the
contradictions of the Industrial Revolution consequences of the expansion of towns
They were conscious of the contradictions that characterised Victorian moral and society, but never overtly
criticised them
First phase of Victorian literature were less critical in fact they preferred to use literature to instruct their readers and to make
them aware of social evils of their time without using criticism → ambivalent attitude of the victorian compromise
The tragicomic novel: Charles Dickens The author who probably best embodied all the features as well as the
contradictions of the Victorian Age was Charles Dickens, an extremely prolific writer who explored and refined all
the types of prose-writing in his long and successful career.
Dickens began his writing career as a journalist and became a famous writer after the publication of his Pickwick
Papers. Dickens produced a huge number of novels, which were published initially as instalments in magazines
and then as complete books, as well as regular contributions to periodicals. His masterpieces such as Oliver
Twist, David Copperfield,Hard Times and Great Expectations ,used a realistic narration to depict the living
conditions of the poor in Victorian England and often followed the life and adventures of a single character.
novels are tragicomic: in them the author denounced the evils of the Victorian world using a comic tone which
acquired the function of a strong demystifying instrument.
Dickens' stories generally have a happy ending, in which suffering and redemption are resolved through surprise
appearances rather than through social reforms.
Late Victorian Novelists' criticism became stronger and realism more evident.
The writers did not accept the Victorian Compromise, they used prose to denounce the evils of society without
any reticence.
In this phase the dark side of the Victorian Age was made visible by novels that centred around the idea of the
'divided self' and of the duality of human nature.
Other problems were the meaning of life in a world dominated by blind faith in progress, the role of moral
values in life and the meaning of colonisation.
late Victorian writers rejected the optimism view of man and progress, which contrasted the adoption of a
pessimistic point of view or through aestheticism.

Ricorda
1. lewis carroll = alice’s adventures in wonderland → nonsense poetry
2. Stevenson = the strange case of dr jekyll and mr Hyde
3. Thomas hardy = tess of the d’Urbervilles
4. Drawing on the origin of species
5. Hawthrone = the scarlet letter
6. Herman melville = moby dick
7. Twain = tom sawyer
8. James = the portrait of a lady
9. Whitman = leaves of grass

Emily Bronte
● Born in 1818 a Yorkshire, the fourth of six sisters.
● Little is known about her life, she lived most of her life in a small and desolate village in Yorkshire, and
she had a deep connection with nature.
● She studied in Brussels with two of her sisters, and returned to Yorkshire when her uncle died.
● She wrote a collection of poems "poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell" with two of her sisters, and
these were pseudonyms used by the three sisters, to disguise their female identity, as it was not easy to
publish works as women at the time.
● Her only novel is "Wuthering Heights".
● She died of tuberculosis in 1848, she was only 30 years old.

Wuthering Heights tells the story of a Yorkshire visitor who tells the story of two families on the Yorkshire moors:
Wuthering Heights, the home of the Earnshaws, and Thrushcross Grange, the home of the Lintons. The story
begins thirty years earlier, when Mr. Earnshaw finds a homeless gypsy boy travelling to Liverpool and adopts
him. The boy’s name is Heathcliff. They had a good relationship (Catherine and Heathcliff).
When Mr Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff can no longer study and is sent to work in the fields.
Catherine, who is loved by Heatcliff, marries the wealthy Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange.
Heathcliff escapes and brings back a rich man to take revenge on both families.
Cathy dies, and Heathcliff is haunted by her ghost until he dies.
After his death it is said that the two ghosts walked together on the moor.
This story combines romantic and gothic elements, dreams and ghosts.
The novel was not well received when it first came out; it was considered overly passionate, morbid, without a
clear moral message. The novel has been praised for its complex construction, the use of flashbacks, and the
descriptionsì of nature.
The story is told by two storytellers, each with a narrative register and a different point of view. One is Nelly,
Catherine’s housekeeper, who assisted at most of the events between the two families. The other is a stranger, a
visiting gentleman named Mr Lockwood, who asks Nelly to tell him the story and writes it in his diary. 
The double narrative was unusual at the time.
The story goes back and forth through flashbacks and personal memories.
It begins at the end of the story, when Mr Lockwood visits Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and is forced to stop
for the night due to a snowstorm.
During the night he is awakened by the sound of a tree branch beating on the window. He tries to break the
branch, but instead of the branch he finds a phantom hand that grabs his.
At Lockwood’s cry, Heathcliff rushes into the room. When Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Hall the next day,
Nelly begins to tell their story.
The very name of Heathcliff binds it to the earth (heath: of uncultivated land; cliff: of a steep rock). The landscape
thus becomes a symbol of the indomitable nature and the passion of the protagonists, who cannot be restrained
by rationality and thus become destructive and "infertile".
Heathcliff represents a romantic hero while Catherine is a modern and revolutionary figure torn between social
conventions and instincts.

CHARLES DICKENS
He was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, the second of eight siblings. His father was jailed for outstanding debts.
Charles was forced to work ten hours a day in a negritude (shoe polish manufacturing) factory. Young Charles
suffered three years of loneliness.
He began his career as a journalist and in 1833 became a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle. He
published a series of sketches using the pseudonym of 'Boz, Sketches by Boz (1833-1836) and in 1836 he
married Catherine Hogarth.
Pickwick Papers (1836) is his first novel. Dickens wrote many novels, which were first published in magazines
and then in the form of complete books.
He also wrote for the theatre and performed in front of Queen Victoria in 1851.
He and his wife had ten children. He left his wife in 1858 for his lover, actress Ellen Ternan. Charles Dickens'
novels range from the lively and fun humour of the Pickwick Papers to more dramatic ones like The Old Curiosity
Shop.
Pickwick Papers is a series of short stories linked by the same character, Mr. Pickwick. It was a huge success.
● Oliver Twist, published between 1837 and 1839, is perhaps his most famous short story dealing with
social criticism, such as the exploitation of children.
● Christmas Carol (1843) is a ghost story, which tells the transformation of a miserable person in the
spirit of Christmas.
● Dombey and Son (1846) attacks greed for money and power.
● David Copperfield (1849-50), an autobiographical novel;
● Bleak House (1852-53), a satire on the administration of English justice.
● Hard Times (1854), dealing with the education and hardships of the working class during the industrial
period.
● Great Expectations (1860) is another novel about the influence that sudden wealth can have on a
young person's moral growth.
Dickens needed to maintain interest from episode to episode. He did so by concluding each episode with a
dramatic turn of events that caused suspense in the reader, who would buy the next issue to find out how the
story continued. This explains the abundance of characters, climaxes and unlikely coincidences in the plots.
Dickens also had to respond to the tastes of his readers (often inclined to sentimentality), which explains Dickens'
indulgence in melodrama in many of his works.
Dickens' characters are among the most memorable in English literature, even without reading his novels, most
people know some characters like Scrooge and Oliver Twist. Some of the names of these characters have
become part of the English language.
'Fagin', from the villain of Olive Twist, is now synonymous with 'thief'.
Dickens's novels focused on social criticism, the writer addressed issues such as the consequences of the
industrial revolution on the lives of the poor, the living and working conditions of the working classes, education,
child labor, the legal system and crime.
Dickens' aim was to denounce the social evils of the time and make them aware of his readers. He believed in
the ethical and political potential of literature and argued that people were forced into prostitution and crime by
poverty, hunger and life in a corrupt society.
Dickens' social world included people from all walks of life. Most of them were city dwellers. Dickens was
fascinated by urban life and many of his novels were set in London. Oliver Twist's London has been described as
foggy, with dirty streets and lots of criminals.
Dickens played a fundamental role in the dissemination of words that already existed in English, but which were
totally unknown. Like the word "boredom", which certainly existed before Dickens, but became commonly used
after his novel Bleak House.
Another aspect of Dickens 'influence on the English language concerns his use of popular slang expressions,
which have now become common in English: such as the word 'butter-fingers', he also invented names so
effective that they became legendary, such as 'Scrooge' .
There are many movies about Dickens stories.

1. Oliver twist
Oliver Twist was born in an orphanage. He is an orphan, the son of an unknown father, and his mother
died in childbirth.
The conditions in the orphanage are terrible and the children suffer from hunger. When Oliver asks for
more food at the end of the dinner, he causes a furious reaction from officials who send him to work as
a gravedigger's apprentice.
Oliver escapes to London, where he becomes involved in a gang of thieves, led by Fagin. On his first
mission as a pickpocket, Oliver is arrested but later rescued and cared for by Mr Brownlow, the victim of
the theft.
He got captured and injured several times.
Fagin's gang of criminals captures Oliver and returns him to Fagin. Oliver is forced to take part in a theft
with Sikes, Fagin's brutal accomplice. Oliver is shot and abandoned by the gang. He is greeted by Mrs
Maylie. Oliver spends an idyllic summer with Mrs Maylie and her adoptive niece Rose.
Nancy, a kind-hearted prostitute who is part of Fagin's gang, learns why Fagin and his gang are so
determined to capture Oliver.
Monks, one of Fagin's accomplice, is actually Oliver's half-brother. Both are children of a wealthy father,
who left much of his fortune to Oliver's mother, Agnes Fleming.
The monks plotted to kill Oliver to get the entire inheritance.
Oliver, who now knows his true identity and receives his share of his father's inheritance, is adopted by
Mr. Brownlow.
Oliver (whose name 'twist' remembers that he is always 'twisted' by circumstances or by the people he
comes into contact with) can finally enjoy a quiet life in the countryside.
Charles Dickens himself had had personal experience of poverty and child labor and through Oliver Twist he
expressed his anger at the living conditions of the poor.
Poverty was seen as a sin and under the terms of the poor law, the poor could only receive assistance if they
lived and worked in workhouses.
Dickens' description of the cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian England does not lead to any reform or change in
the Victorian mentality. Dickens bitterly criticised the conditions of Victorian England but offered his readers a
happy ending to this story of evil, poverty, misery and hypocrisy.

2. Hard times The novel is set in a fictional town called Coketown, based on the town of Preston, in the north of
England, where Thomas Gradgrind, a supporter of utilitarianism (a philosophy that states that
everything in life must be useful) raises his two children, Louisa and Tom, to believe in hard facts and to
reject all forms of imagination and fun.
Gradgrind doesn’t believe that love (another "useless" sentiment) must be the basis of marriage, and
marries her daughter Josiah Bounderby, a factory owner 30 years her senior. Louisa agrees, in part to
help her brother Tom, who is employed by Bounderby.
Louisa's marriage is extremely unhappy, and she returns to her family.
Old Mr. Gradgrind begins to understand his mistakes and protects Louisa from her husband.
Meanwhile, Tom, who has become a dishonest and selfish man, steals money from the Bounderby
bank. Stephen, an innocent man from the Bounderby factory, is wrongly accused of the theft and
ultimately dies as a result. Gradgrind and Louisa, realising that Tom is responsible for the theft, manage
to get him out of the country and out of justice.
At the end of the story we find Gradgrind, a different man. He has given up on his philosophy of facts
and is dedicated to helping the poor. Tom regrets his actions, but dies unable to see his family again.
Bounderby, the true villain of the story, dies alone on the streets of Coketown, while Louisa, who never
remarried again, finds happiness in the love of her friends and family.
Hard Times belongs to the mature period of Dickens production in which he turned to a harsher critique of the
evils of the Victorian situation in England. The novel's two main themes are the plight of young characters raised
in a hostile adult world, and the hardships of the working class and the terrifying contrasts between the living
conditions of the rich and the poor in industrial and urban Victorian England.
Dickens fiercely attacked utilitarianism, a materialistic philosophy that encouraged reform and struggled to extend
education to all, but at the same time seemed to exclude aspects of education, such as the imagination and the
full development of the individual. In the new schools, pupils were crowded into huge classrooms, where they
became numbers rather than real people, where they were forced to conform with strict discipline, and where
they were discouraged from expressing their own feelings.
 Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of a wealthy doctor, Sir William
Wilde. Oscar was a brilliant student and studied at Ireland's most prestigious university. In 1884 he married a
wealthy English woman, Constance Lloyd, with whom he had two children. He found work as an editor of a
women's magazine. In 1888 he published The "Happy Prince and Other Tales", a series of short stories for
children.
Two years later his only novel "The Picture of Dorian Grey" was released.
The novel was attacked as an immoral work. Wilde's first opera, Lady Windermere's Fan, was performed in
February 1892. It was an immediate success with both audiences and critics and encouraged Wilde to devote
himself to the theatre.
He wrote other satirical comedies such as A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Oscar Wilde was involved in a lawsuit that led to his ruin. Wilde had an affair with young Lord Alfred Douglas,
whose father Lord Queensberry accused him of homosexuality, which was a criminal offense at the time. Wilde
accused Queensberry of libel and took him to court.
Wilde was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and hard labour. When Wilde was released from prison in
1897, he was physically and psychologically a broken man, abandoned by many friends, including Lord Alfred
himself. He lived in exile in France and wrote very little. His only significant production from this period was The
Ballad of Reading Gaol, which chronicled his terrible experience in prison. Wilde died in 1900, aged just 46. His
only novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, first appeared in Lippincott's Monthly.
He wrote a tragedy in French "salomé", for the actress Sarah Bernard, but British censorship blocked it. He
wrote children's stories; "Canterbury ghost", "Happy Prince", "The secret garden".
His philosophy of art is based on the principles of aestheticism: art is neither moral nor immoral, it has no moral
purpose, but beauty in itself is a supreme value.
"The Picture of Dorian Grey" tells the story of a rich and handsome young man who has his portrait painted by Basil
Hallward. Dorian, struck by the beauty of the painting, makes a promise; he will sacrifice his soul for Basil's study.
Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton who speaks to him of the transitory need to maintain one's youth and beauty,
while the portrait itself will bear all the signs of time. Dorian leads a hedonistic life of pleasure, sin, crime and
corruption. His scandalous lifestyle is hidden by the fact that he remains young and beautiful, while the portrait
image, which is hidden, becomes old and ugly.
At the end of the story, responsible for the death of an actress and the murder of Basilio, Dorian stabs the
portrait. Dorian is found dead, now transformed into a horrible old man next to the portrait, which has returned to
its original beauty.
When the novel was published in 1890, it came as a shock to most Victorian readers, who believed that the
purpose of art was education and moral enlightenment. The Portrait of Dorian Grey openly proclaimed beauty as
the sole purpose of art and life.
However, the novel teaches a lesson in the end, as Dorian's sins and his hedonistic life lead to his destruction.
He uses his innocent aspect to be accepted in society and also to satisfy his lowest desires without paying the
consequences. As such, the novel ranks alongside Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) as a
representation of how the literature of the period explored Victorian society and the forbidden desires behind
acceptable public faces.
The novel combines the supernatural elements of the gothic novel with decadent French science fiction. It is
narrated in the third person. Aestheticism was an art that developed in Europe in the late 19th century. He
argued that art exists for the sake of beauty and must not serve moral, political or educational purposes. It was a
reaction
to the utilitarian philosophy of the Industrial Revolution. In England, the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement
paved the way for aestheticism with the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones.
most of his aphorism are paradoxes
era un hedonista
the most famous are:
1. experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes
2. everyone incapable of learning has taken to teaching
3. we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars
4. always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much
5. America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between
6. I think that God in creating men overestimated his ability
7. bigamy is having one wife too many (= una moglie di troppo); monogamy is the same
8. a woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat
9. chastity is the greatest form of perversion
10. 35 is a very actritive age. London society us full of women of the very highest birth who have remained
35 for years
11. My own business always bores me to death ; I prefer other people’
 12. I have the simplest of tastes, I am always satisfied with the best
13. a true friend stabs you in the front
14. Why was I born with such contemporaries?
15. I can’t resist anything but temptations
16. I am not young enough to know everything
17. I love acting. It is so much more real than life
18. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong
19. we have everything in common with american nowadays except, of course, language
20. if you are not too long, i will wait for you here for all my life
21. my wallpaper (carta da parati) and I are fighting a duel to death; one or the other has to go
22. the only way to get rid of tentation is too yield to eat

Literary background = the break with the 19th century

The early 20th century was marked by the birth of Modernism
Modernism included and was influenced by different artistic movements like Futurism, Cubism,Expressionism,
Surrealism
The following common recurring features
1. Fragmentation of the narrative point of view, multi-layered and complex narration
2. Redefinition of the traditional concepts of time and place
3. Use of experimental narrative techniques caratterise the working of mind
4. Rejection of traditional grammar and punctuation
5. Use of free verse
6. Use complex vocabulary
General idea = the human mind is at the centre of the writer’s scrutiny
In britain the group of modernist artist included Eliot, Woolf and Joyce
= heterogeneous group of intellectuals who experimented with traditional literary form
Many of them use the ‘ Stream of consciousness’ = expressing the complex workings of human mind
The writer active in 30s were influenced by the historical events
→ Auden and Thomas
Ricorda
1. Lawrence = portrait of a lady, sons and lovers, lady chatterley’s lover
2. Conrad = polish , art of darkness
The war poet most most prolific groups of poets during the war years
They were all soldier who fought in the trenches
Aspects in common: they took part in the war as soldiers, they all enrolled enthusiastically when war broke out,
they described war as a terrible experience leading to death, suffering and alienation
→ most of them died in the trenches

WINSTON CHURCHILL
● Born in 1874 to an aristocratic family, he entered the British Army and participated in the First World
War.
● Remembered for his role as British Prime Minister during World War II.
● He was heavily criticized for ordering the bombing of Dresden in 1945.
● He was also an artist, writer and historian.
● He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953
● He suffered from depression and alcoholism.
● He lost the 1945 elections, but returned to power in 1951.
● He died in 1965, and a state funeral was arranged for him by Queen Elizabeth II.
Churchill spoke to the House of Commons as Prime Minister for the first time on May 13, 1940 in the new
administration. In this speech he warned Parliament of the sacrifices that had to be faced. He spoke of Britain's
determination to participate in all-out war in the belief that Germany could be defeated.
Churchill offered nothing but "blood, toil, tears and sweat", he didn’t say that would be easy.

RUPERT BROOKE
● He was born in 1887 in Warwickshire in a well-to-do family and he was well educated 🡪 he went to
King’s college.
 ● He was a good student and a good athlete + he was good looking 🡪 he became popular for his
handsome looks
● His early poetic writings were characterised by the tendency to represent an idyllic view of the English
countryside.
● He published his first collection of poems in 1912 with the title of ‘Georgian Poetry’, this title suggest that
he belong to the group of writers and poets ‘georgian poets’ who rejected the didactic style of Victorian
poetry and dealt with humble themes with a melancholic and elegiac tone.
● He travelled a lot, also to Italy.
● He joined the conflict at the beginning, in the royal Naval division, but saw little combat (he didn’t have a
long experience) since he contracted blood poisoning and died in 1915 on a hospital ship in Greece.
His obituary appeared in The Times and was written by Winston Churchill.
● He wrote a sonnet collection entitled ‘1914 & other Poems’, published in 1915, where he expressed his
positive idea for war.
● He wrote 5 sonnets linked to the war, in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing for
people and nations.
● The soldier’s experience was seen by Brooke as a sacrifice for the nation and war is glorified as a
triumph of patriotism and heroism.
He saw war as a noble adventure 🡪 his poems show a sentimental attitude.
● He turned into a symbol of the “young romantic hero” who inspired patriotism in the early months of the
great war.

The soldier it was written before going into the trenches, england is seen as a mother, it's like he says 'if I die a part
of me will be in God, and it will be English

Siegfried Sassoon
● Born in 1886 in Kent.
● He is remembered for his poems on war, including the collections "Counter-Attack and Other Poems"
and "war poems"
● In May 1915 he went to fight in France, but returned the following year to recover from fever.
● In 1917 he was wounded and returned to England
● His open opposition to the war nearly led to a court-martial.
● He met Wilfred Owen at the hospital.
● He also fought in Palestine, where he was wounded again.
● He wrote both prose and poetry
● "The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston" is a trilogy of autobiographical novels.
● He converted to Catholicism, his religious works are considered inferior to those on the subject of war.
● He died in 1967.
● Suffered from post traumatic stress (shell shocked)
● He didn’t want anything to do with the war, in a moment of anger he threw the medal obtained in a river.
● "I participated in the war because I thought it was a defensive war, but it became a war of attack and
conquest"
● He tells of his own experience of the brutality of the conflict.
● Use a simple and explicit style.
● He uses his poetry to denounce what is really war, which is hidden and told in another way by
propaganda.
Suicide in the Trenches → Tells the story of a young soldier who decides to commit suicide because he cannot stand
the horrors of war.
This boy before the war was happy, then when he experiences the war he decides to shoot himself a bullet in the
head, the author states that all people should go home and pray never to experience the war.

WILFRED OWEN
● He was born in 1893.
● He was working as an English teacher in France when he visited a hospital for the wounded and
decided to return to England and enlist.
● He was sent to France and he was injured and sent to a war hospital in Edinburgh. Here he met
Sassoon, a poet who read his poems and encouraged him to continue to write.
● He returned to the front in 1918 but he died seven days before the armistice (he was killed in a German
machine gun attack).
● His poems are painful, he had a negative idea of the war. In his poems we can find accurate
descriptions of life in the trenches.
● In the preface of “disabled and other poems” he said “my subject is war and the pity of war”.
 ● He denounced the hypocrisy of propaganda pro war describing the condition of soldiers.
● He said that there is nothing noble in war, it’s just suffering, atrocities and death.
● His poems (the preface) are the manifesto against war 🡪 the preface of the lyrical ballad is the
manifesto of romanticism; the preface of dorian grey is the manifesto on aestheticism.
● He said that the role of the poet is to warn about the atrocity of war, we don’t have to believe that it is
noble to die for your own country.
Dulce et decorum est It talks about how when soldiers were attacked with the use of poison gas, everyone tried to cover
themselves with gas masks, but a soldier failed and died spitting blood from his mouth.
It tells part of the hard life in the trenches.

Wystan Hugh Auden

He was born in York in 1907. He studied at Oxford. His collection Poems was accepted for publication by T.S.
Eliot in 1930, establishing Auden as one of the most important poets of his generation. He visited Germany,
Iceland and China and participated in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 he moved to the United States.
As a young man in England he was a supporter of socialism, but in his American years his interest shifted to
Christianity and Protestant theology.
In 1956 he was appointed professor of poetry at the University of Oxford and later was also chancellor of the
Academy of American poets.
Auden was also a successful playwright, editor and librettist; he wrote the libretto for Stravinsky's The Progress of
the Rake in 1950.
Another Time (1940), The Double Man (1941), Nones (1951), The Shield of Achille (1955) , Homage to Clione
(1960), containing a significant number of light and humorous works.
He died in Vienna in 1973.
Auden was part of a group of progressive poets. These poets expressed strong dissatisfaction with the
consequences of the war and were characterised by strong pessimism. Their political views were leftist or even
Marxist and their works dealt with complex and problematic issues such as Nazism, lack of employment and
economic stagnation. These poets, traditionally called "Poets of the Thirties", shared the idea that the poet
should take an active role in society: for these reasons they rejected the complexity of Eliot's poetic style in
favour of a more colloquial and simple style, which would drew people's attention to important postwar issues.
After his move to America, his poetry began to focus on themes such as loneliness, subjectivity and emotions,
and was heavily influenced by Christian values.
Funeral Blues is one of Auden's most famous poems. This poem was originally part of a play, The Ascent of F6,
which Auden wrote with Christopher Isherwood in 1936. It was originally a satirical piece, mocking a dead
politician, but it was later revisited in more serious tones

Funeral blues is a poem about the death of a person.

Whoever speaks wants silence, from everything and everyone, because he wants everyone to participate in
mourning, the dead man was everything for him, now that he is dead, there is nothing beautiful in life.
Refugee blues A Jew speaks to his wife and claims that there is no longer room for them, they are still alive, but Hitler
wants them dead and the soldiers are looking for them.

modernism
years after 1 world war
modernism= it's not just litterature current, it's also art, music
why it is born? we have different factor
1. psychoanalysis with Freud→ subconscious
2. Einstein with relativity → the time became an issue, time can be different from different points of view
3. William James = coined the ‘stream of consciousness’ it also called ‘interior monologue’= flusso di
coscienza (philosopher)
4. Berson talk about the idea of time = considered soggettive ( inner) or objective (chronological)
5. city became metropolis → the life changes, the life became hechic (frenetica)
6. the end 1 war world led distress, angustism and also led the imperative of breaking tradition
7. the idea of ‘I’ is in crisis= we don’t have the omnitions narrators or the 3 person
8. vertical not horizontal
vertical= so many characters, the authors aren’t interested in the story
in italy we have Svevo, in Germany we have Mann (Death in Venice) and Kafka (Metamorphosis), in France we
have Proust (In search of lost time), in America we have Fauclkner (The sound and the fury)
in England we have James Joyce and Virginia Woolf
 The stream of consciousness
= refers to a highly varied narrative technique used by early 20th century authors to write their books
The idea of the stream in literature was the result of factor
1. Influence of the theories of sigmund freud = of the human psyche explained in ‘The interpretation of dreams,
which proposed the revolutionary idea that human consciousness is a multi-layered entity and most of it is
unknown → unconscious
2. The theorisation of difference between objective and subjective time made by Bergson = time is structured as a
constant flow → two main works ‘ Time and free will’ and ‘Matter and memory’
3. New conception of human consciousness described by James = REVOLUTIONARY IDEA
The subjective life is not a chain or a train, it van’t be organised in rational way
Human consciousness is a constantly flowing stream in which past and present events and perceptions
coexist
4. The sense of anxiety of the first world war
Virginia woolf = Times Literary Supplement inn 1919 describe modern life using stream of consciousness
1. Fragmentations
2. Point of view shift
3. Syntax is abolished
4. The use of direct or indirect interior monologue

james joyce
Born in Dublin in 1882, Joyce began studying Italian, French and English at University College Dublin, where he
also began writing reviews and literary articles.
In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, who later became his wife.
Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories written using a naturalistic style.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). The protagonist of the book is Stephen Dedalus, a young artist
who rebels against his country, his family and his religion and leaves Ireland in a kind of self-imposed exile to find
freedom.
In Trieste Joyce met the Italian writer Italo Svevo, who greatly influenced Joyce's style and themes. In 1914, at
the outbreak of the First World War, Joyce moved to Zurich, where he wrote Ulysses (1922). Ulysses
reproduces the structure of Homer's Odyssey: the 18 chapters of the book draw inspiration from similar episodes
contained in the Greek epic poem, thus giving the idea of a contemporary epic narrative. The narrative follows
the actions of a single character, Leopold Bloom (the modern Ulysses), who roams the city of Dublin in a single
day (June 16, 1904). Through the use of the flow of consciousness technique Joyce enters Bloom's mind and
allows the reader to follow his thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
In 1920 Joyce moved to Paris, where he began work on his latest novel, Finnegans Wake (1939). After the
Germans occupied France in 1940, Joyce and his family returned to Zurich, where he died in 1941.
Joyce is considered one of the main authors of Modernism.
Joyce's literary works reveal his complex relationship with Ireland, his homeland: even though he left Dublin in
1904, Joyce's works are all set in Ireland, which he loved and hated at the same time. For Joyce, Ireland was a
country dominated by stagnation, but it was also her main source of inspiration: in all his works Joyce drew
inspiration from Irish people and places.

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories written in 1900 and published in 1914.

The stories are about 15 typical Dubliners. The stories can be divided into 4 main groups; childhood,
adolescence, adult life, public life.
The latest story in the collection is titled The Dead. It is a portrait of the Irish bourgeoisie, stuck in a condition of
unsolvable mediocrity. The protagonist of the story, Gabriel Conroy, is the prototype of the mediocre Irish
bourgeois, an individual who lives his life like a dead man.
The Dublin that Joyce portrays is a static and provincial city, a place that does not have the cosmopolitan
atmosphere like many other European capitals of the time, this affects the life of its inhabitants, who are
represented as imprisoned in a city that does not give them the opportunity to grow. All characters in Dubliners
have a desire, but they eventually give up because they don't have the will to turn their desire into action. This
condition affects all Dubliners and is defined by Joyce as 'paralysis', interpreted as spiritual death and physics.
In Joyce's stories, Dublin becomes the prototype of the paralyzed city of modernity. There is only one way to
escape the universal paralysis affecting the entire Irish nation: epiphany. The word "epiphany" means "revelation"
and "manifestation". Joyce uses it to refer to the moments in which the characters of the Dubliners experience
the sudden revelation of their condition of paralysis. Unfortunately this revelation does not lead to a real change
in their lives: it simply makes them more aware of how dead and paralyzed they are.
Joyce rejects the Victorian idea of the omniscient third-person narrator and the use of an internal narrative
perspective. Each of the stories contained in the Dubliners is told from the point of view of one of the characters.
Ulysses is set in Dublin in a single day, June 16, 1904. (when he first met Nora, or when Nora said "I love you") → (because
Joyce meant that the most important things can take place in a single day).
Consisting of 18 episodes narrating the actions and interactions of three characters; Stephen Dedalus, Leopold
Bloom, a middle-aged Jewish advertising salesman, and then his loving but unfaithful wife Molly.
Ulysses is an epic novel that offers different visions of daily life, personal attitudes, political and cultural
conditions. Joyce gave each episode a title that refers to a character or episode from Homer's Odyssey, a time
and a place, a part of the body (heart, liver, stomach ...), an art (music, painting. ..), a colour, a symbol and a
narrative technique.
Joyce emphasises the sad reality of modernity, where the heroism of the ancient world is lacking.
Unlike Virginia Woolf, who expresses the characters' free thoughts in a syntactically controlled way, Joyce does
not use any kind of control over the character's thoughts, which flow across the page as freely and inconsistently
as they do in Bloom's mind.

virginia woolf
She was born in London in 1882. the daughter of a prominent Victorian scholar, Sir Leslie Stephen, and of a
woman who had travelled extensively in her life and had been a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Being a woman, Virginia did not get the chance to go to college, but she received a very good home education.
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and The Lighthouse (1927), two works that show the influence that the theories of Marcel
Proust, Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson had on Woolf's imagination. Woolf's novels are like mental journeys
focused on the contrast between inner life and external reality.
When his mother died at the age of 49, Woolf had a severe nervous breakdown: this is considered to be the
beginning of his psychological instability.
In 1904, after his father's death, Woolf moved to Bloomsbury, where he founded the Bloomsbury Group, a group
of intellectuals and artists. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, with whom she founded the Hogarth Press, a
publishing house whose purpose was to publish the works of experimental writers.
In 1941 she committed suicide, drowning in a river, filling his pockets with stones.

Mrs Dalloway's story takes place in one day in one place: the city of London.
A middle-aged woman, Clarissa Dalloway, is busy shopping for flowers and items for the party she's organised
for the evening. The narrative follows her, her thoughts and actions. In the novel, Clarissa's counterpart is
represented by a man, Septimus Smith, a war veteran in shock. Septimus also wanders around London, but his
is a journey towards self-destruction: the novel ends with Septimus' suicide.
News of his death reaches Clarissa while she is at her party. She is deeply shocked and realises that Septimus'
death was essential for her to stay alive.
Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged woman who has rather conservative political views and is not particularly open.
As a woman, she is clearly defined by her marital status, as the title 'Mrs' accompanying her name suggests, and
by her status as a mother. She is a complex and frustrated woman: she experiences her being 'wife' and 'mother'
as a limit to her freedom, but she is unable to express her feelings spontaneously and imposes strong restrictions
on her freedom precisely because she feels weak and Imperfect.
Clarissa's mind is constantly flooded with her past memories.
Clarissa is torn between a desire to celebrate life (which is demonstrated by her love of parties and social life)
and a morbid attraction towards death. Septimus is also characterized by Clarissa's morbid attraction to death
and considers suicide as a form of liberation from the burden of life. Woolf follows Clarissa and Septimus as they
roam London on the same day and share the same morbid fears, worries and attractions. At the end of the day
only Clarissa manages to survive: when the news of Septimus' suicide arrives, Clarissa realizes that death is part
of life and decides to continue living.
In this way Woolf makes a radical change from the tradition of Victorian literature and underlines the idea that
even the most common character on a more common day can be scrutinised by a writer.
What interests a modernist writer like Woolf is not the variety of the plot, but the functioning of the mind, the
impressions the world makes in it and the ways in which it is influenced by external reality.
Unlike Joyce, who doesn't filter hir characters 'thoughts and let them flow in an uncontrolled and rather
inconsistent way, Woolf prefers to show her characters' thoughts in a more controlled and organised way. For
this reason it uses a third person narrator, impersonal and omniscient. He never abandons the stability of syntax
and grammar and his prose style is always elegant and logically structured.
What Woolf underlines in his novel is the importance of subjective time with respect to objective time: the latter
corresponds to the actual duration of chronological time; the first, on the other hand, refers to the time of the
mind, which goes back and forth in time in a second.

To The Lighthouse.
The novel consists of three parts, entitled "The Windows", "Time Passes" and "The Lighthouse.
-The first part of the novel is set during World War I. The Ramsays spend the summer holidays with their eight
children in a house on a remote island in the Hebrides.
James, the youngest son, desperately wants to reach the lighthouse he can see from the window, but his father
tells him he can't because the weather is bad.
-The second section of the novel summarises ten years in very few pages: during these years the Ramsay house
is abandoned and Mrs. Ramsay dies.
-The third section begins ten years after the moment in which the novel begins: the Ramsays return to the house
on the island and Mr. Ramsay decides it is time they make their trip to the lighthouse.
The Lighthouse centres on a single character: Mrs. Ramsay. She is the centre of the family and embodies all the
qualities and roles traditionally attributed to women.
Everything and everyone in the novel revolves around her: she is the source of consolation and love for her
children, a caring and sensitive wife to her husband who is a traditional Victorian man and the source of
inspiration for all the people around her, the Mrs. Ramsay remains a constant presence throughout the novel
even after her death, which occurred at the beginning of the second part.
Her physical absence does not erase her from the memory of her children and Lily Briscoe, the painter, will
constantly seek the "vision" that will allow her to complete her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay.
In this sense, Mrs. Ramsay can be associated with the lighthouse of the novel's title: for her family she is a
source of light and inspiration, while for Lily she is the symbol of what lies at the basis of artistic creation, that is,
inspiration!
The first part of the novel takes place in one day, but is longer than the second part, which lasts ten years

DYSTOPIAN NOVEL
years author title type

1726 swith gulliver’s travel political

1895 H. G. wells Time machine science fiction

(inventor of fantasy
invisible man)

1932 Huxley brave new world eugenics

1945 Orwell animal farm political satire

1949 Orwell 1984

1953 Bradbury fahrenheit 451

= temperature in which
papers burn

1954 Golding the lord of the flies won the nobel USA

1956 Philip dick minority report short story USA

1962 Burgess a clockwork orange film of kubrick

1963 Boulle (france) Planet of the apes Film saga

1968 P. Dick short story film the

blake runner

1982/85 Moore and Lloyd comics Film V for

vendetta

1985 Mary Atwood The handmaid's tale serie tv

1992 Harris = subgenre call Fatherland

ucronia / ‘what if’ dal tedesco madre patria
→ hitler won the 2ww

non importa non in lista King 22/11/63 = homicide of

kennedy
 2004 david mitchell film = cloud atlas

2005 Kazuo Ishiguro ● the remains of Nobel abbiamo un

the day (non film
dystopian)
● never let down
they are clowns

2006 McCarthy after a nuclear explosion ‘

the road’

2008 collins hunger games saga

2009 Dashner the maze runner saga

2013 Roth divergent saga

george orwell
= eric arthur blair
He was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked in the administration of the British empire.
He spent his childhood in England and he went to a prestigious boarding school called Eton college (he was
interested in literature).
He couldn’t go to university and in 1922 he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.
In 1927 he returned to England and he lived among the poor people in London before leaving for Paris where he
did menial jobs. Then, he returned to London under the name of George Orwell and in 1933 he published “down
and out in Paris and London”, describing the poor living conditions of the poor people in the two cities.
He fought in the Spanish civil war, during which he was wounded and forced to return to England where he wrote
“Homage to Catalonia” (1938), where he described his war experience.
He did many jobs: he was a journalist, an essayist and novelist and he worked for the BBC.
In 1945 he published “animal farm”, an allegorical novel and in 1948 he published his last great novel callen
“ninety-eighty-four”, a dystopian vision of a future world ruled by an oppressive totalitarian regime in which the
state controls every detail of a person’s life. This book was a big success.
He moved to Jura, a remote island and he died of tuberculosis in 1950 in a London Hospital.
All of his work was based on his interest in the social and political conditions that he had observed in his own
lifetime.
ORWELL’S ANTI-TOTALITARIANISM
He is one of the strongest anti-totalitarian voices of literature.
His works express a clear warning against the dangers of totalitarianism in society.
Animal Farm clearly shows his commitment and his political positions. It is written in an allegorical form, in which
human characters are replaced by farm animals.
But the novel that contains Orwell’s strongest anti-totalitarian message is Nineteen Eighty-four, a dystopian novel
describing the dangers of totalitarianism.
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
POWER AND DOMINATION
The title: 1984 refers to the future and is the reverse of 1948 (the year in which Orwell wrote the book).
This novel examines the role of power and domination in an imaginary future society that reflects the regimes
that he came to know in the 30’s and 40’s.
His interest was focused on the difficulty of preserving individuality, the value of truth and personal intellectual
freedom in a society where language was manipulated to hinder clear thought, where censorship controlled all
forms of expression.
He offered a nightmare vision of an oppressive future society as a warning to the Europe of his days.
THE CHARACTER OF WINSTON SMITH
He is the protagonist of 1984 and his name is highly symbolic: “Winston” is a reference to Winston Churchill,
while Smith is the most common English surname. His name suggests the idea that he is a common English
man.
Winston is one of the few human beings whose humanity has not been completely cancelled by the totalitarian
regime in which he lives. He keeps blurred memories of a past in which things were better and he hates the
party.
In spite of his attempts to preserve his humanity and his love for Julia, he eventually surrenders in room 101, the
place where he is tortured and forced to betray his lover.
he was politically committed ( impegnato politicamente)
‘orwellian situation’ = complete lack of democracy come dire da incubo
he invented the Big brother = he was a dictator who want to be a brother 4 the people
he wasn’t rich, he was born in Asia and then he come back to england
→ he studied in Eton college thanks to scholarship
he became a journalist BBC → before that he joined the army in Burma
after the army he wrote ‘ Burmese days’ = relationship between the burmanian and the english
he was socialist and pacifist
he was a volunteer for the spanish war in aragon
he was wounded in his throat ( gola) → he wrote Homage to catalunya
He wanted to text his experience about the environment ?
→ he wrote text about homeless and he mingle with them in Paris and in London
‘Down and out in Paris and London’
he had tuberculosis and he died in 1950 after war
he didn’t realised his success because he died before his book became famous
he is famous for 2 books = they still sell copies today
1. animal farm was written during the 2 WW
he had very hide opinion about the russian revolution
= a fail
it is like a children story but it is a political satire of ussr
easy to read
nobody want to publish this book because the ussr was allied with us and usa
french title ‘ URSA’ = bocciato
mr jones was a bad farmer he is drunk
Old Mayer (a pig) called all the animal in the barn and he has a famous speech
→ the pig dies but the animal follow the revolutio and kill mr jones
● napoleon (pig) he had dog as security
● snowball (pig)
they want the power
→ snowball goes away
and napoleon became a dictator
Why pig?
1. the power is dirty like pig
2. pigs are very intelligent
napoleon wrote commands for all the animal
→ the 7 commandment says that all the animals was eguale
not all can be read but Benjamin a monkey can
Benjamin was bff of Boxer ( horse) who was very forte → i will work harder
→ boxer broke his leg and napoleon decide to sell to the butcher
→ benjamin known were he goes because he read it on the van
napoleon says that Boxer died about heart attack
moses is a crow that doesn’t speak and he doesn’t take a part
mollie is a mare (giumenta) very elegant ( she wear hat) after the revolution she runs away and she
found a new shellder in mr frederich farm
the sheep can’t read and write they are stupid
→ they invented a song ‘4 legs are good 2 legs bad’
( bandiera con zoccolo = hoof e corno= horn con sfondo verde)
things will change
❖ napoleon start to sleep in the house and start to dress like an uman
❖ only benjamin understand the slogan ‘ 2 legs good 2 legs bad’ became ‘2 legs good 2 legs
better’
❖ benjamin found that the 7 commandments change in ‘all animal are equal but some are more
equal than others’ paradox
animali e personaggi storici
1. old mayer= lenin / marx
2. farmer jones = czar Nicholas II
3. napoleon = stalin → dogs are the kgb = servizi segreti
4. snowball= trotsky
5. boxer= stakanov
 6. moses = the orthodok church
7. mollie =the russian aristocracy
8. benjamin non ha un personaggio storico stalin non aveva un opposizione
9. squealer (pig) braccio destro di napoleon = the propaganda ministry
2. 1984 (published in 1949)
he knew that 1984 it was his last book because he was hill (died in 50)
he wrote in the western east coast of scotland
world after the 3 ww → 3 country
1. oceania (London)
2. eurasia
3. eastasia
it isn't a peaceful world
the protagonist is winston smith that he wrote in the ministry of truth
there is only one party call the party
→led by the big brother
slogan
● war and peace
● freedom is slavery
● ignorance is strength p 401
society divided by
● party's member inner party
● majority is the outer party
● proles they lives in the slums
everywhere there are microphone and video cameras → even the tv had the power
they can't have a diary you mustn't have a thought
→ no sexual relationship
→ children are snicht
winston smith took the unusual name and usual surname
→ metaphor is like us but he is different
love can change the thinks
→ he fall in love with julia