Romanticism

After the French Revolution, English society had different reactions to it. The intellectuals
supported it since they thought that it would have brought justice and equality. Two of the
most famous names in the English political debate were Burke and Paine. They were both
conservative since Burke foresaw that the French Revolution would lead to bloodshed and
Paine declared the king’s superiority over common people. They shared the enthusiasm of
the evolutions, but then, disillusioned when it turned out to be a tyranny, they went back to
supporting ancient static governments.
The British government aimed to damage France on a commercial level.
A few years after the failure of the French Revolution, Napoleon defeated all European
countries, gaining supremacy until England decided to fight France at sea. The mighty naval
force led by Nelson, the great English hero, defeated Napoleon at Trafalgar in 1805. Then,
British troops commanded by Wellington defeated Napoleon several times, after he had
been weakened by the disastrous campaign in Russia. The final great victory of the English
armies against Napoleon took place in 1814 at Waterloo.
England finally got Cape of Good Hope, Singapore, Malta and fulfilled the enormous financial
cost of the war. After these victories, England experienced the Industrial Revolution (end of
the 18th century) which radically modified society. The discovery of machinery caused wide
discontent (Luddism) among people who worked many hours and erased all the differences
in work competencies. The crisis was surmounted by the discontent of William PITT the
YOUNGER, who signed the Combination Act by which trade unions between employees of
industries were made illegal. In Manchester, eleven people were killed in a demonstration.
(Peterloo massacre). In Ireland the social conditions were worse than in England, so Pitt
decided to unify the Irish Parliament with the English one. In the reign of George IV,
Combination Acts were pealed and associations of employees were legalised. Unarmed
police (Bobbies) replaced the army.
The 2nd generation of the romantic movement included Shelley and it was influenced by
legends and mythology of Medieval oriental literature. Many authors of this generation
moved to foreign countries: · Italy: developed in association with the need for
freedom/patriotism and against the invaders (Leopardi: lyric; Manzoni: historical interests) ·
France: Romanticism developed later as realism. · Germany: Sturm and Drang (Storm and
Rush), Goethe anticipated Romanticism authors that rejected classical rules and looked to
their own national history for a source of inspiration.
Romanticism: a new Attitude In the 18th century there is a new attitude towards literature, a
new sensibility of mankind, and feelings (introspection and melancholy, desire for travelling,
to see nature). This attitude culminated at the end of the century with a new way of
considering man and his role in the society which was called Romanticism. This movement
involved the whole of Europe and all forms of art and developed as a reaction against
reason, order, rules, conventions... (enlightenment). This sensibility made itself in: · The
drama, in the form of sentimental comedy · In the poetry, in the form of meditative poetry.
The Graveyard School belonged to meditative poetry; this poetry was grave and voiced
poets’ sorrows. Death, suicide, life after death, and decay were their obsessions which were
revealed through the attention to Middle Ages (medieval ruins, caverns, cadavers), in
opposition to Enlightenment. Thomas Gray is the most important poet of this genre, the
precursor of the Romantic movement, who wrote Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
(1751).

WORDSWORTH
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote beautiful poetry filled with sweet imagery, usually
based on the natural world. Often Wordsworth’s poems contained slight somber undertones,
as is the case in this poem, as we will explore shortly. This is possible due to the conflict In
Wordsworth’s life and his battle with depression. Some scholars suggest that
Wordsworth’s relationship with his sister, Dorothy was far from platonic. But Wordsworth did
marry and lived with both his wife and sister.
Wordsworth lived through the French Revolution, which he initially supported and later
rebuked. He, along with his close friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was the
pioneer of the romantic era of poetry, and his earlier romantic poems were widely derided
because of this. He was also the poet laureate for Queen Victoria for seven years.
Today, Wordsworth’s reputation rests heavily on the collection of Lyrical Ballads that he
published along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud”

The speaker, likely William Wordsworth himself, is wandering down the hills and valley when
he stumbled upon a beautiful field of daffodils. The speaker is transfixed by the daffodils
seemingly waving, fluttering, and dancing along the waterside. Albeit, the lake’s waves
moved as fervently, the beauty of daffodils outdid it with flying colours. The poet feels
immensely gleeful and chirpy at this mesmerizing natural sight. Amongst the company of
flowers, he remains transfixed at those daffodils wavering with full vigor. Oblivious to the poet
is the fact that this wondrous scenery of daffodils brings the poet immense blithe and joy
when he’s in a tense mood or perplexed for that matter. His heart breaths a new life and
gives him exponential happiness at sight worth a thousand words.
Though the poem’s title hints at a cloud, it is not about it. Instead, it is about a group of
golden daffodils dancing beside the lake and beneath the trees. Wordsworth’s poetic
persona, at some point, visited that spot, and he is describing how he felt having the sight of
those beautiful flowers. The poet metaphorically compares him to a cloud for describing his
thoughtless mental state on that day. Like a cloud, he was wandering in the valley aimlessly.
The sudden spark that the daffodils gave to his creative spirit is expressed in this poem.

KEATS
John Keats was one of England’s greatest poets. He was born in London on 31 October
1795. His father Thomas Keats was an innkeeper. His mother was called Frances. The
couple had 5 children. In 1803 John Keats went to Clarke’s School in Enfield.
However, in 1804 tragedy struck when his father was killed by falling off a horse. His mother
quickly remarried. However, she soon separated from her new husband. John Keats then
went to live with his grandmother. John was reconciled with his mother by 1809 but by then
she was ill. She died in 1810.
In 1810 John left school and in 1811 he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary in
Edmonton. As a teenager, Keats became passionately fond of poetry and when he was about
18, he wrote his first poem, one entitled ‘Imitation of Spenser’.
In 1815 John became a student at Guy’s Hospital in London. But he continued to write
poetry. In 1816 he had a poem published for the first time, in a magazine called The
Examiner. It was a sonnet called ‘O Solitude!’. Also in 1816, Keats passed his exams. Then in
1817, he published a book called ‘Poems’. However, it was not a success, attracting little
interest.
Nevertheless, Keats continued writing. His epic poem Endymion was published in 1818.
During 1818-1819 Keats continued to write great poems including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’,
‘Hyperion’, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, and ‘Ode to Autumn’.
However, in 1820 Keats fell ill with tuberculosis. He went to Italy in the hope that the climate
might help. Nevertheless, John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821. He was only 25.
Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery.

“Ode on a Grecian urn”

In this poem, Keats (or at least, the speaker in the poem) mulls over the strange idea of the
human figures carved into the urn. They are paradoxical figures, free from the constraints

and influences of time but at the same time, imprisoned in an exact moment. For all that they
don’t have to worry about growing old or dying, they cannot experience life as it is for the
rest of humanity.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ represents three attempts at engaging with the urn and its scenes.
Across the stanzas, Keats tries to wonder about who the figures are, what they’re doing,
what they represent, and what the underlying meaning of their images might be. But by the
end of the poem, he realizes that the entire process of questioning is redundant.
The title of the poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ gives readers the central idea firsthand. It is a
poetic representation of a piece of art, specifically the beautiful paintings on a Grecian urn.
The poetic persona has encountered the urn with utter astonishment. He is rather astounded
by the artist who has created this everlasting piece. The depictions on the vase raise several
questions in the onlooker’s mind. Through this poem, Keats’ persona describes it beautifully.
In the end, he proclaims the everlastingness of art through the line “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty”.
Like other entries in Keats’s series of “Great Odes of 1819”, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ builds
on a specific structure. Its closest formal cousin is probably ‘Ode on Indolence,’ though it
contains a slightly different rhyme scheme. Split into five verses (stanzas) of ten lines each,
and making use of rigid iambic pentameter, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is very carefully put
together.
Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ taps on the themes of the immortality of art, beauty, and
romanticism. The main theme of this poem is the immortality of art. To depict this theme,
Keats uses a Grecian urn and emotive paintings in this piece. Each painting incites complex
emotions in the speaker’s mind. He expresses his thoughts regarding the
depictions. By doing this, he tries to portray the everlastingness of art or this special vase.
Keats contrasts art with humans to portray that art exists forever even if the artist is no more.
Besides, the themes of nature and beauty, and nature are also integral to the central idea of
this ode.

The Victorian age

During the Victorian Age, there was a communion of interests and opinions between writers
and their readers.
One reason for this close relationship was the enormous growth of the middle class, who
were avid consumers of literature.
Victorian literature was first published in this form: essays, verse, and even novels made their
appearance in installments in the pages of periodicals; because of that, the writer was
obliged to maintain the interest of his story at certain levels, because one boring installment
would cause the public not to buy that periodical anymore.
The Novel was the most popular form of literature and the main form of entertainment; the
novel was realistic and analytical, but also social and critical
It also had a social responsibility: it should reflect the social changes created by the Industrial
Revolution or by the growth of towns.
Novelists were aware of the evils of their society, such as terrible conditions of the manual
workers and the exploitation of children.
The Victorian novelists conceived literature also as a vehicle to correct vices and
weaknesses of the age, in fact, didacticism is one of the main features of their work.
There was an omniscient narrator, which commented on the plot and erected a barrier
between
‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
In the final chapter, there were the retribution and the punishment.
The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was the city, which was the main symbol of
industrial civilisation and the expression of anonymous lives and lost identities.
Usually, the characters were created and there was a deep analysis of the character’s inner
life.

Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens lived a very intense life. He was born in Landport, near Portsea in the south
of England, in 1812.
His family was a large one. The boy was twelve when he was withdrawn from school, in
1824, and sent to work in a shoe-blacking factory in London for a few months to help his
father, imprisoned for debts. This unpleasant experience was never forgotten and marked
the beginning of Dickens's social commitment and identification with the poor and the
oppressed, which are constantly present in his fiction.
At the age of sixteen Charles Dickens was apprenticed in an attorney's office to study law,
but soon gave up and learned shorthand to become a reporter in the courts of law. These
experiences provided the material for the description of lawyers and their world in many of
his novels.
He was only twenty-one when his first fictional work, Sketches by Boz (1836), appeared in
installments and had an enthusiastic reception from both critics and public. The publication
of Pickwick Papers (1836-7) increased Charles Dickens' popularity and brought in handsome
profits, which enabled him to marry.
A frantic career as a novelist developed which was to continue all his life and which Dickens
managed to combine with several other activities.
He travelled in America, Switzerland, France, and Italy and wrote accounts of his journeys;
kept a voluminous correspondence with all sorts of people; committed himself to a variety of
social causes; was a keen amateur actor and theatrical producer; gave public readings from
his works; fathered ten children and separated from his wife.
He died at the age of fifty-eight, in 1870, prematurely old and broken down by strain and
exhaustion.

Oliver Twist
This novel talks about the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced when he
was a boy.
The protagonist of the novel is Oliver Twist, a child that was brought up in a workhouse and
then he is sold to an undertaker as an apprentice, but then he runs away to London. There, a
gang tries to make a thief out of him, but fortunately, a gentleman helps him. Oliver is
kidnapped by the gang, and he’s forced to commit burglary, and he gets shot and wounded.
Finally, a family adopts him and through some investigations is found that he comes from a
wealthy family, and that his half-brother paid the gang to ruin him. Lastly, his half-brother and
the thieves get arrested.

Oliver wants some more

This extract begins with Dicken’s description of the way the children in the workhouse used
to eat. Their master gave them one porringer, so they starved. Dickens, sarcastically, said
that the bowls never needed to be washed, since the children polished them with their
spoons, and after their poor meals they sucked their fingers, hoping to be lucky enough to
have some crumbs left.
The boys suffered from hunger for three months and they decided that one of them needed
to confront their master about their food rations, and that boy was Oliver.
During the next meal, after the master served the boys, Oliver sat up from his seat and
requested some more. The master first was astonished by his request, made fun of Oliver,
and then said that he was going to be hung. But then he was confined for the rest of the
night and the next morning he was going to be sold.

Oscar Wilde
He was born in Dublin in 1854 into a wealthy family. Wilde was a brilliant student, he
attended Trinity College Dublin and during his studies, he showed a nonconformist
personality: he was not very popular among his fellow students or even among his teachers,
and he preferred to stay alone to read especially the classics.
Oscar Wilde later won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he became popular for his
eccentricity, wit, and brilliant conversations. While at Oxford, he became a disciple of Walter
Pater and his theory Art for the Love of Art which profoundly influenced his life and works.
From Pater, Oscar Wilde learned that art had no didactic and moral purpose, adopted a
lifestyle based on aestheticism and began to behave and dress extravagantly: he wore silk
stockings, velvet jackets, knee-length trousers, strange ties and often walked carrying a lily
or sunflower in his hands. Wilde was quite an exhibitionist and when he moved to London, he
received many invitations from London’s high society because people were completely
fascinated by his witty statements.
Oscar Wilde travelled extensively, went to Italy, Greece, and the United States to give a
series of lectures on the Pre-Raphaelites and aesthetes. Famous for his phrase to the
American customs I have nothing to declare but my genius (I have nothing to declare except
my genius). When he returned home, he married Constance Lloyd, and they had two
children.

The picture of Dorian Gray

This novel is set in London during the 19th century. Dorian Gray is a young man and a
painter, Basil Hallward paints his portrait. After that painting, Dorian’s portrait shows his
experiences and signs of age, while he carried on being a handsome young boy, on the
inside he wasn’t a good person: he treated other people badly and people died because of
his insensitivity. When the painter discovers everything, Dorian decides to kill him.
Eventually, he wants to set himself free and he thought that by stabbing his portrait he would,
but instead, he kills himself. When he dies, his portrait returns to its original state and
Dorian’s face shows his actual age.

Dorian's hedonism
In this extract, Wilde talks about Dorian’s life after the influence of a book Lord Henry gave
him.
Once or twice e year he used to invite prestigious people to dinner, where he also invited
musicians so that he could charm his guests with their music. Lord Herny helped him
organize those dinners, that were famous even thanks to the harmony of the decorations.
Dorian by his guests was perceived as the reincarnation of an ideal: he had the culture of the
perfect scholar and the manners of a perfect citizen.
To him, life was the most important form of art: that could have been noticed by his mode of
dressing, and everyone was fascinated by the accidental charm of his graceful, and they
tried to imitate him.
But Dorian didn’t want to be seen just as someone you could ask for advice on the clothes or
accessories: he wanted to elaborate a new lifestyle with his own philosophy and principles.
Worship of the senses was feared by other men since the senses could be stronger than
them. But Dorian thought that senses had never been understood, and they were perceived
as savage since humanity had repressed them, while adoration of senses could lead to
another level of beauty. As he looked back on how man had moved through history, he could
feel the feeling of loss and renounces that were caused by the fear that man had of being
absorbed by the senses.
He thought that the prophecy that Lord Henry made about the need for a new hedonism was
needed to save humanity. This hedonism needed both intellect and passion; asceticism,
which mortified the senses, had to be ignored. He wanted to teach men how to concentrate
on the moments of life.

The Modern age

AGE OF ANXIETY
The cultural climate of the early 20th century witnessed a deep change, like a revolution,
both in thought and feeling. The positivistic faith in progress and science had led Victorian
people to believe that all human problems would be solved, but the experience of the | World
War caused disillusion and frustration. Moreover, an entire system of thought was dismantled
by scientific, political and psychological theories and was characterized by experimentation
in all forms of artistic expression from literature (Joyce, Woolf), to painting (Picasso,
Boccioni, Dali) to architecture (Art Decò, Gaudi) the most important influences were:
the ideas influenced by S. Freud in his "Interpretation of Dreams" in which he explained that
the development of the human psyche was deeply influenced by the subconscious. He also
stated that the super-ego, the influences imposed by society, education, and moral laws,
could distort man's behaviour. His method of investigation of the human mind based on the
analysis of dreams and the concept of free association influenced the narrative techniques of
the writers of the Modern age;
the theory of relativity introduced by A. Einstein, according to which time and space were
subjective dimensions, shook the solidity of scientific certainties and resulted in verbal
experimentation and exploration of memory in literature, rebellion against perspective in art,
revolution of tone, rhythm and harmony in music;
the new idea of time was conceived by the French philosopher H. Bergson who made a
distinction between historical time which is external and linear, and psychological time, which
is internal, subjective and emotional.
The English philosophy became analytic, focusing on the study of language: rectify the
knowledge possessed.
Centrality of literature was declared as a guide to the perplexities of an age whose keywords
were isolation, alienation. Through elaborate structure, allusion, literary references, images
and myths, the modern writer expressed the impossibility of mastering the chaotic universe.
In this situation intellectuals felt deprived of all the certainties, and reference points and that
caused a deep feeling of anxiety, isolation, and alienation. In this second part of the century
(the 50s), after the II World War when everything was destroyed and reconstructed, the
welfare state had created an atmosphere of hope and expectation of social justice which was
disappointing.
Social criticism found spokespeople in a group of writers known as the "Angry Young Men"
whose works voiced the frustration and disillusion of the post-war young generation
(Osborne).
In the 50s and the 60s, there was the so-called cultural revolution which was affected by
mass society and mass media. Revolution in music with rock and roll and groups such as the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their quest for self-expression and liberation led to the use
of drugs, sexual freedom, and free behaviour (mini-skirt, abortion, homosexual couples). The
70s, instead, were marked by the outburst of political violence, Terrorism connected with the
old question of Northern Ireland.

MODERNISM
Modernism was an international movement which developed in the first decades of the 20th
century and was represented by several members of the highest level. It was a period of
extraordinary vitality in the history of art.
The term "Modernism" contributed to expressing the nature of modern experience; it
expressed the desire to break with established forms and subjects.
In the novel, under the influence of Freud, it explored the characters' psyches through the
stream of consciousness technique and the interior monologue.
In poetry, it mixed slang with elevated language, experimented with free verse, and often
employed obscure symbols and fragmented images.
In painting, Fauvism, which developed in France, was a manifestation of the new interest in
the primitive and the magical. Picasso and Georges Braque began to develop Cubism: they
painted by separating objects and figures into basic geometric shapes such as cubes,
cylinders, spheres and cones. In England Modernism represented a profound change from
the previous period.
The private morality of the Victorians had been strict and cynical, decency had to be
maintained, whatever went on under the surface; the positivist faith in progress and science
had led people to believe that all human misery would be swept away. The works were no
longer to be an expression of the feelings of the authors, but they had to be objective
creations of reality. The gap between the generation of the young and the older one grew
wider and wider. The First World War, in which almost a million British soldiers had died, left
the country in a cultural crisis and disillusioned mood: stability and prosperity proved to
belong only to a privileged class, consciences were haunted by the atrocities of the war. An
increasing feeling of frustration led to a remarkable transformation of the notions of Imperial
hegemony and white superiority because of the slow dissolution of the Empire into a
"Commonwealth of Nations".
Even science and religion offered little comfort or security. The great advances in technology
had radically altered and distorted the known world.
New concepts of man and the universe emerged. In 1905 Albert Einstein published his
theory of special relativity, which radically changed the views of time and space.
The modernists felt the need to innovate the tools of literature: hence, the rejection of the
conventions and traditions of the past. All the artistic forms of modernism had common
features:
the breaking down of limitations in space and time;
the awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily uncertain;
the use of allusive language;
the use of the image to provide a true insight into the nature of things;
importance of unconscious as well as conscious life;
the need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form.

MODERN POETRY
Poetry of the years preceding First World war was characterised by a distinction between the
avant-garde and the poets influenced by Victorian Romantic tradition.
Georgian poets: they were influenced by Victorian Romantic tradition. They felt sympathy for
English elements (such as the countryside) and were indifferent towards the revolution in
sensibility of modernism (Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas);
War Poets: their poetry lied in the unconventional way they dealt with the horrors provoked
by war. Their language was cruel and violent (experientialism);
Imagism: that is the movement who modern poetry began with. Its main
characteristics were:
Use of hard images;
The poems were the response of the author to a scene or object and did not contain any
morality;
The aim was to achieve precision.
French Symbolism: it is a movement that influenced new poetry. Symbolists stressed the
importance of unconscious and they used the images to evoke.

To T.S. Eliot, poetry was a way to escape from emotion and personality. The language he
used needed to be carefully analysed to be understood;
Oxford poets: a group of poets in the 1930s that was mostly concerned with social and
political aspects of human life. this was because of the brutal facts of those days and since
their generation was encouraged to develop social conscience. They were not as
complicated as Eliot, though they admired him: they needed to communicate with their
fellowmen, and they used slag and jazz rhythms (W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis
MacNeice);
New Romantics: a group of poets from the 1940s that rediscovered emotions as themes
such as sex, love, birth, and death (Dylan Thomas).

FREE VERSE
The free verse consists of a complete sentence or single word and the relation with the
succeeding lines is flexible. There’s no more traditional meter and rhyme scheme: the only
unifying element is the use of poetic lines. Alliteration and assonance give musicality to these
verses.

THE MODERN NOVEL

The English novelist during the 18th and the 19th centuries used to address the reader,
make comments on his own works, make mediations between his characters and readers,
and wrote in a chronological way.
During the second decade of the 20th century, there was a shift between Victorian to
modern novels. In that period, there was an urgency for social change and novelists felt
moral and psychological uncertainty. They had to connect the solid values of the past and
the confused present. Even the new concept of time and the theory of the unconscious
contributed to these changes.
The viewpoint shifted from the external world to the internal world of a character's mind;
The plot wasn’t written in chronological order and was not well structured.
We can distinguish three groups of novelists:
Psychological novelists: they concentrated on the development of a character's mind and
human relationships (Joseph Conrad, who tried to record the mystery of human experience,
D.H. Lawrence, who worked on the inner problems of working-class people, and E.M.
Forster, whose main theme was the complexity of human relationships)
Modernist novelists: use subjective narrative techniques, exploring the mind of their
characters (James Joyce and Virginia Woolf);
The novelists that, during the 30s, became didactic and took political stances (George
Orwell, Aldous Huxley)

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
It is a verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon, and it is immediate; this distinguishes it
from both the soliloquy and the dramatic monologue, where conventional syntax is
respected. It is from introductory expressions like "he thought, he remembered, he said".
There are two levels of narration: one external to the character's mind, the other internal. It
lacks chronological order and the presence of subjective time. It disregards the rules of
punctuation, and it lacks formal logical order. It is used in a novel to represent the unspoken
activity of the mind before it is ordered in speech. Sometimes interior monologue is confused
with the stream of consciousness, but they are different.
Stream of consciousness technique
American psychologist William James coined the phrase "Stream of consciousness" to
define the continuous flow of thoughts and sensations that characterize the human mind.
Therefore, the present doesn't exist, and the only reality is the individual consciousness
where past and future flow into each other. Sigmund Freud discovered the power of the
unconscious which led to analyse consciousness more deeply. The French philosopher
Henri Bergson distinguished between the mathematical time of science (each minute equals
the other) and the time of the mind which changes from one person to another. For example,
the time necessary to boil some water is the scientific time, but the time that person waits for
the water to boil is the time of spiritual experience; he called this second time "duration". The
writers who used this technique were Henry James, James Joyce, William Faulkner, John
Dos Passos, J. D. Salinger, Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson; the novelist who
used this technique were Marcel Proust, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf.

Siegfried Sassoon
Suicide in the trenches
Before the war, the young boy led a life of simplicity until life in the trenches stripped him of
his youth, mind, and life. The horror and loneliness of the trenches ultimately resulted in the
young boy’s suicide. The poem’s speaker points an accusatory finger at the jingoist crowd
who encouraged young men to join the war and holds them accountable for this tragic loss
of life.
War is the theme of ‘Suicide in the Trenches.’ The poet focuses on how the horrors of war
impact young soldiers, like the man who chose to kill himself rather than spend any more
time in the trenches of WWI. Sassoon mentions the insects, explosions, lack of alcohol, and
more. He also focuses on how soldiers are celebrated and quickly forgotten by the public.
The damaging psychological effects of the war are explored in ‘Suicide in the Trenches.’ As
a result of violent warfare, many soldiers suffered from debilitating nervous conditions such
as shell shock. This poem explores the conditions that drove soldiers to this fragile state of
mind and the shocking consequences: suicide. The harsh reality of the mental strains of
warfare is stated bluntly in order to emphasize its commonality.
Nationalism and patriotism are critiqued in ‘Suicide in the Trenches ‘, as the speaker directly
addresses the bureaucrats and jingoists that encouraged young men to enlist in the war
through propaganda. Sassoon felt an allied sympathy for the naïve young soldiers. They
joined the war under the false premise of its romanticized image. Sassoon blames those in
power who sent innocent men to their deaths.
Loss of innocence is also explored in the poem as the speaker narrates the tale of a
‘grinning’ boy who ‘slept soundly’ and ‘whistled with the lark.’ These joyous images of nature,
youth, and happiness completely juxtapose the following stanzas where the hellish reality of
war ‘kills youth and laughter.’

Thomas Stearns Eliot

He was born in America at St Louis, Missouri, but then he became an English citizen. He was
educated in Europe exactly at Merton College, in Oxford, and he began his career as a
schoolmaster. Eliot was a poet, playwright and literary critic. He had an encyclopaedic
culture and a deep knowledge of all world literatures. He admired Dante because of his
capacity to express personal feelings, to restraint, to find a balance between the personal
and the impersonal. Eliot was influenced by French symbolist, such as Bergson (about the
concept of time).
He had knowledge and he used as sources Homer, Ovid, the Indian philosophy ancient rites
and civilizations.
Eliot’s work can be divided into two periods: before and after his conversion to Anglicanism.

The Waste Land

Waste Land is a modernist poem that illuminates the devastating aftereffects of World War I.
First published in 1922, the poem is considered by many to be Eliot’s masterpiece.
The five sections of the poem employ multiple shifting speakers and delve into themes of
war, trauma, disillusion, and death.
The poem bears witness to the physical and emotional devastation of the postwar landscape.
Settings include a wealthy woman’s bedroom, the garbage-filled Thames, the sea where a
drowned man lies, and a drought-worn desert before a storm.
The poem’s final section calls for peace, or “shantih.”

The Burial of the Dead

The burial of the dead is a metaphor for the condition of contemporary man, whose life is
meaningless, empty, alienating, and as a result quite like death. Traditional myths and
symbols are used in an original way and acquire different and sometimes difficult
connotations. The lines don't have a regular scheme, and the meter isn't traditional.
Furthermore, there aren't even classical divisions in stanzas, and the lines can be either be
composed by two words or normal and short-length sentences which makes them free lines.
Even if the poem lacks traditional features, it contains some alliterations here and there,
which give it a kind of musicality. Moreover, repetitions of sounds and words are used to
emphasize a particular aspect of the situation E.G., "so many…so many" referred to the
crowd. Since Eliot is quoting Dante's lines, he's trying to make the city (which is caught
during its rush hour) look like Dante's Inferno.
In this passage spring is regarded as a cruel season, since it breaks the illusion of safety and
protection created by winter. This unique view of the coldest season of the year is odd, as it
breaks with the traditional stereotype of a hostile and glacial period. In this poem winter
acquires a positive connotation.
People who are part of the crowd in the city often sigh and continuously fix their eyes before
their feet, so it is possible to understand how frustrated they feel.
Stetson is one of the people Eliot meets in the crowd, and he's likely to be identified with
Ezra Pound (who used to wear the Stetson hat).
The reference to the First Punic War metaphorically stands for the universal issue due to the
dismay of contemporary society (which came from the first World War).
Similarly, the corpse is a metaphor for the contemporary man, who feels useless, empty and
overwhelmed by and alienating reality, which can be compared to death. The sprout
probably means a new beginning, like a rebirth, so it represents the victory of life over death.
The Dog the author mentions is probably three-headed Cerbero, which guards the entrance
of Hades, the ancient Greek God of underworld.
Eliot calls the reader "mon semblable, -mon frère!" (Quoting Baudelaire) as they both share
the same situation.

James Joyce
James Joyce was born in Dublin 1882, educated at Jesuit schools and university college in
Dublin. He came from a well-to-do family that become poor because of his alcoholic father
that didn’t work.
The catholic church turned against Charles Parnell (one of the leading supporters of Home
Rule for Ireland,1846-91) because of his affair with a married woman; the themes of betrayal
and the temporary nature of fame influenced Joyce deeply reflecting in his choice of anti-
heroes as protagonists and in his rejection of the stifling atmosphere in Dublin.
He didn’t sympathize with the nationalist movement; he saw patriotism as a backward
movement which paralysed the development of a free spirit in Ireland.
He became a religious sceptic but never hostile to the church.
He self-imposed exile, left Ireland in 1904 (he gave private lessons in Trieste and worked in
Rome in a bank) when he wrote The Dubliners (written between 1905-09, published in 1914).
Collection of stories, easy to read, simple language but deep meaning, contrast and
continuation of the time, past-present-future, cyclical circle of events that continues and time
has his effects on characters (Bergson "la durée").
He had lost his commanding role in art: its task is neither to teach nor to convince but to
make people aware of reality through their own subjective feelings.
He adopted different point of views, different narrative techniques (from third person narrator
to the stream of consciousness-interior monologue, where the lack of punctuation or sintax
are meant to reproduce in writing the movement of thought).

Dubliners
The work is a collection of 15 short stories which were all written by 1905, except for the
Dead, the last and longest story, which was written in 1907. The stories are arranged in 4
groups that correspond to 4 phases of life: childhood-adolescence-maturity-public life.
Themes: A significant theme is the feeling of paralysis that many of the characters
experience because of being tied to limiting social traditions. This paralysis is not only
physical but also moral, linked to religion, politics and culture. Dubliners accept their
conditions because they are not aware of it or because they don’t have the courage to break
these “chains”. They are spiritually weak, and they can almost be considered as slaves of
their familiar moral, cultural, religious and political life. This paralysis is also reflected in their
relationships, because the characters are unable to relate to others an communicate (as can
be seen in the “Dead”). Another important theme is the revelation or epiphany, which
indicates the moment in a story when a sudden spiritual awakening is experienced, and
which marks the climax of the story. Finally, another theme escape: the characters feel a
feeling of enclosure and wants to change his situation, but all his attempts are destined to
fail. Narrative technique and style: each story is told from the perspective of a character.
Free direct speech and free direct thought are widely used: they consist in the presentation
of the protagonist’s thoughts, thus allowing the reader to get a direct knowledge of the
character. Since the language used suits the age, the social class and the role of characters,
Joyce uses different linguistic registers. Apparently, it is realistic because it describes the
characters, places, streets and languages of the contemporary Dublin. But on the other
hand, Joyce can give common objects a deeper meaning, transforming them into “symbols”.

Eveline
Eveline is sitting by a window in her house, looking outside at the street. She remembers her
childhood when she used to play with other kids in a field that is now filled with new houses.
She also thinks about her abusive father, with whom she currently lives, and the difficult life
she leads, working in a shop and as a nanny to support herself and her father.
Eveline faces a tough choice: should she stay at home and be a dutiful daughter, or should
she leave Dublin with her boyfriend, Frank, who is a sailor? Frank wants to marry her and live
with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to secretly leave with him. Eveline
remembers how Frank courted her and everything was fine until her father started
disapproving and arguing with Frank. Since then, they have been meeting in secret.
As Eveline thinks about her decision to start a new life, she holds two letters in her lap, one
for her father and one for her brother Harry. She starts to remember the happier times with
her family when her mother was alive, and her brother lived at home. She had promised her
mother to take care of the home. Eveline considers that her life at home, doing cleaning and
cooking, is hard but maybe not the worst option, because her father is not always mean.
However, the sound of a street organ reminds her of her mother's death and changes her
thoughts. She remembers her mother's sad and uneventful life and passionately embraces
her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank.
At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She seems
distant and worried, overwhelmed by everything around her, and she prays to God for
guidance. Her previous decision to leave seems to have vanished. When the boat whistle
blows and Frank pulls her hand to lead her onto the ship, Eveline resists. She holds onto the
barrier as Frank is swept away with the crowd toward the ship. He keeps shouting "Come!"
but Eveline remains fixed on the land, not moving or showing any emotion.
Analysis: Eveline's story shows the difficulties of holding onto the past when faced with the
future. She is the first female character in Dubliners, and her story reflects the conflicting
emotions many women in early twentieth-century Dublin experienced, torn between a
traditional domestic life rooted in the past and the possibility of a new life through marriage
abroad. Eveline goes back and forth between wanting to leave her difficult life and worrying
about fulfilling her promises to her deceased mother. She clings to the memories of her
family and struggles to let go of those relationships, despite her father's cruelty and her
brother's absence. She relies on memories and imagines what others want her to do or will
do for her. She sees Frank as a saviour, rescuing her from her domestic situation. Eveline is
torn between the familiar call of home and the past and the unknown possibilities and future
experiences, unable to decide.
The fear of repeating her mother's life triggers Eveline's realization that she must leave with
Frank and start a new phase in her life. However, this realization is short-lived. When she
hears a street organ and remembers the same organ playing on the night of her mother's
death, Eveline decides not to repeat her mother's life of sacrifices and madness, but
unfortunately, that is exactly what she does. She desires to escape, but her attachment to
routine and repetition overpowers her impulses. On the docks with Frank, away from the
familiarity of home, Eveline seeks solace in the habitual act of prayer. This action indicates
that she has not decided but is trapped in a cycle of indecision.

Ulysses
The story takes place on a single day, Thursday, June 16th, 1904. During this day, three
main characters wake up, have various encounters in Dublin, and go to sleep eighteen hours
later. The central character, Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged advertising canvasser and non-
practicing Jew, is Joyce's common man. He leaves his home at eight o'clock to buy his
breakfast and returns finally at two the following morning; in the hours in-between, he turns
up in many streets, attends a funeral, endures misadventures and delight. During his
wanderings, Bloom meets Stephen Dedalus, who is the alienated protagonist of A Portrait of
an Artist as a Young Man, and who becomes, momentarily, his adopted son: the alienated
common man rescues the alienated artist from a brothel and takes him home where the
paralysis of their fatigue prevents them from achieving a personal communion. Finally,
there's Bloom's wife, Molly, a voluptuous singer who is planning an afternoon of adultery with
her music director.

Mr Bloom's breakfast (Chapter 4)

third person: Mr Leopold Bloom was eating animal entrails with relish. description of what Mr
Bloom does during breakfast, cold weather in the kitchen but it was warm outside.
second level of narration (stream of consciousness):
Mr Bloom’s describing in his mind, what was going on in the mind of a cat, many points are
used. he says that cats are intelligent and that they understand everything, more than we
think

Molly’s monologue (Chapter 28)

Molly’s interior monologue. It’s night, she’s in bed, and she’s thinking about his husband, that
asked there to bring him breakfast in the bed the following morning.
She’s questioning why her husband asked her to bring breakfast, she immediately thought
that he did that to impress Mrs Riordan. She was avaricious.
Absence of punctuation.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 into a wealthy family. His father, Leslie Stephen,
was a famous literary critic and philosopher of the Victorian era. Virginia was raised in a
cultured atmosphere, in fact, her parents' house was frequented by famous writers of the
time such as Henry James and Thomas Hardy. The writer attended some courses at King's
College London, but studied mainly at home, where she had her father's huge library at her
disposal.
Virginia loved the ocean, the sound of the waves, and the sea and the house were the main
themes of novels The happy period for the Stephen family ended in 1895, when Virginia's
mother died and her father, unable to bear the idea of going to Talland House without his
wife sold the house.
After the death of her mother, Virginia went through a long period of depression and began
to show the first signs of the mental illness that characterized her entire life. In these years he
spent a lot of time in his father's library reading and writing articles and essays and at the
same time began to develop a conflictual relationship with his father because of his
authoritarian and tyrannical character.
After Leslie Stephen's death in 1904, Virginia, her brother Toby, and sister Vanessa left the
Hyde Park Gate home and moved to the Bloomsbury neighbourhood.
Their home became the centre of the famous Bloomsbury Group, where important
intellectuals met including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Vanessa, the publisher and
journalist Leonard Woolf, who would become Virginia's husband in 1912, and the novelist
E.M. Forster. The group expressed the new trends of the early twentieth century and was
decidedly against the rigid Victorian moralism that had permeated the years of Virginia's
youth.
After her marriage to Leonard Woolf, she published her first novel The Voyage Out. These
years were characterized by another period of depression that culminated in a suicide
attempt.
Throughout her life, Virginia Woolf was always interested in the role of women in society and
worked as a volunteer in the movement that fought for women's right to vote, she also wrote
works on women's emancipation such as A Room of One's Own, which had a great impact
on the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s of the 900s.
Meanwhile, mental disorders continued to torment the writer who was always overwhelmed
by crises of anxiety and insecurity. The Second World War worsened her fears, walking
through the streets of London destroyed by the war, she saw the disintegration of the world
around her, she also began to hear voices in her head and fearing to go crazy she chose the
only possible path for her: "death by water" by drowning herself in the River Ouse (Sussex)
near her home in 1941.

Mrs Dalloway
The novel takes place in London (in her extracts, this city is very recognizable it opens at 10
o'clock and finishes nearly at midnight. Mrs. Dalloway goes to buy some flowers but not at
the corner shop, but at Bond Street (it's exactly parallel to Oxford Street, a chaotic street, full
of shops). In Bond Street there are a lot of shops for rich people, where only few people can
afford to buy there (for example the most important Italian brands are there). Mrs. Dalloway
went to buy some flowers on Bond Street because she was having a party in the evening at
her home, and she decided to go herself to buy flowers. All the events happen during this
banal story. While she was inside the shop a terrible noise attracted her attention but also the
owner's attention. It was a car that drove noisily, and people looked at the car with interest
and curiosity, also Mrs. Dalloway tried to watch outside the shop. It was just on that occasion,
looking outside on the road, that she saw Mr. Warren Smith with his wife, an Italian girl who
left Italy to marry this man walking on the streets, going to a psychiatric hospital. Mrs.
Dalloway is attracted to this man, and she knew that was a shell-shocked veteran. After this
episode, Mrs. Dalloway goes home and there she has an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh,
her previous lover. (Mrs. Dalloway refused him for the simple reason that she decided to
marry Richard Dalloway because he was very prestigious, a man within the upper social
class, who would give her a very comfortable type of life. Even Peter Walsh was very rich,
but he was very adventurous, so he would give her a more adventurous and interesting kind
of life, but at that time Mrs. Dalloway refused that, to have a quiet, conformist and prestigious
type of life.) Peter Walsh after a while left her home to go back to the hotel but on the way,
he went through Regent's Park where he saw Warren Smith with his wife going to visit
another psychiatrist, William Bradshaw, for an interview. The interview with the doctor lasts
three quarters of an hour, the psychiatrist decided to recover Warren Smith to the
psychiatric hospital, to the clinic. Peter Walsh goes back to the hotel and on this occasion, in
this lapse of time, he saw the ambulance that was carrying Warren Smith to the hospital
because he tried to kill himself, throwing down to the window of his house Warren Smith
decided to put in end his life, to commit a suicide. Mrs. Dalloway learns of Warren Smith
death because the doctor William Bradshaw, present at Clarissa's party, referred to the
people at the party that Warren Smith committed a suicide. The learning of this event
shocked Mrs. Dalloway, for a while because there was a very close link between Septimus
Warren Smith and Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway has been a woman who has accepted
conformity, to live a peaceful, normal, quiet life, in which she imposes severe restrictions on
her spontaneous feelings, differently from Septimus Warren Smith who had a very
adventurous style of life and because of this, he can suddenly fall prey to panic, to feelings of
guilt (The cause of these feelings lies in the death of his best friend, Evans, during the war.
After the war, Septimus is haunted by the spectre of Evans). Mrs. Dalloway admires
Septimus, but then he decided to kill himself, she admired him for his dignity because he
decided to put an end his suffering and his inner troubles. Mrs. Dalloway admires him a lot
because of this decision. (This novel deals with a separate world that is the outside world, the
London life but at the same time we can see the life within the minds of these characters).

Clarissa’s party
In this text, Mrs Dalloway’s party is described and at the party, Sir William Bradshaw
suddenly arrives and tells Clarissa that Septimus committed suicide. In this passage, we see
Mrs Dalloway’s reaction to this terrible news and how her social status success doesn’t
always correspond to a good and happy social life. The border between richness and
happiness, sanity and madness, and tolerance towards a false life in which the protagonists
of the novel are involved, all become present in this text and let the reader reflect upon these
themes that were the ordinary struggles of modern men and women (as Virginia Woolf points
out through the description of her novel’s main characters). Clarissa reflects on death and on
her admiration for Septimus. They both married thinking about needs and not about love.
This sudden awareness of leading an unhappy, fragile, and impotent life led Septimus to
suicide, while Clarissa simply went on.

George Orwell
George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in 1903 in India, where his father
worked as an administrative officer of the British Empire. As a child he moved to spend his
childhood in England with his mother and two sisters. Orwell attended St Cyprian's College
in Eastbourne and later, on a scholarship, enrolled at the prestigious Eton College.
The years spent at St Cyprian were very unhappy for the writer who in an autobiographical
essay entitled Such, Such Were the Joys (1947) described all his suffering and discomfort. In
this school Orwell felt alone, marginalized by classmates from wealthy families, hated the
narrow-mindedness and snobbery of teachers, often suffered corporal punishment.
Orwell also felt quite unhappy at Eton, but here he began to cultivate his intellectual interests
thanks to his tutor who left him free to choose the topics of his essays and helped him to
develop his literary style.
After school, Orwell decided not to go to university and returned to India. Here he joined the
Imperial Police in Burma and remained there from 1922 to 1927, when he decided to resign
because of his anti-imperialist ideas. This experience inspired his first Burmese novel Days
(1934) and two essays, Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging.

Animal farm
Old Major’s speech
Everyone was present, except Moses, so the old major began to speak. he says that he will
die soon and wants to pass on his wisdom to everyone. he says that life is miserable,
exhausting and short, they are forced to work and eat to survive, when eventually they will be

killed to go to feed humans. no animal is free. man is the enemy of animals, he consumes
without producing, he puts animals to work, if man would disappear animals would rule the
world. animals never reach a year of life, cows' milk is only used for humans and not for
calves, all the eggs of the hens did not hatch before they had to be given to humans. animals
must rebel against humans, must take justice for themselves

Post war drama

The 1950s were deeply affected by the events which had marked the first decades of the
century, namely the experience of the two world wars, the shock caused by the horrors of
the (Nazi) concentration camps and the atomic bomb, the decline of a well-defined system of
beliefs and values. As a result of this, a general sense of disillusionment, frustration,
alienation and impotence dominated human existence.
Consequently, post-war drama underwent a revolutionary phase, whose two main trends
were “absurd” and “hunger”. The term absurd was coined by the literary critic Martin Essling
and was applied to the works of a group of dramatists who emerged in the ‘50s: the Irish
writer Samuel Beckett, the Russian-born Artur Adamov and the Romanian-born Eugène
Ionesco. They did not form an organised school, since each playwright regarded himself as
an outsider, with his own roots and background and his personal approach to form and
subject matter. Albert Camus in his essay The myth of Sisyphus had written:
“A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a
universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. He is an
irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he
lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor
and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.” (What distinguishes Camus from
the absurdists is that while the former presented the absurdity of the human condition by
means of lucid language and logical reasoning, the latter thought that since life is absurd, it
cannot be represented by harmonious or logical speeches, but only by a sort of language
which also has to be absurd; in this way they achieved the unity between subject matter and
form).
Hence the definition of “Absurd” as out of harmony, devoid of purpose. Being deprived of his
religious, transcendental and metaphysical roots, man is lost, all his actions become
senseless, absurd, useless. There is no reason, no justification, no motivation for it. So the
absurdists’ plays have no story or plot, and dialogue often consists of incoherent babbling.
Pauses, silences, physical immobility underlines the spiritual and physical immobility of
modern man.

Samuel Becket
Samuel Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. He worked as a teacher of French at
Trinity College, Dublin, and École Normale Supèrieure in Paris, where he also settled
permanently in 1938. In his writing he alternated between English and French and translated
his own works. During World War II he joined the resistance and was forced to flee to the
French countryside. Toward the end of the war, he worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross.
Beckett’s major literary breakthrough came during the 1950s, when he wrote a series of
groundbreaking plays and novels.

Waiting for Godot

The play is divided in two acts. In act I, the two tramps Vladimir and Estragon are waiting on
a country road for the mysterious Godot. They suffer from cold and hunger, and they even
think about suicide. The other two characters, Pozzo and Lucky, make purposeless journeys
to fil their existence.
In the end, the two tramps are still waiting for Godot, who never arrives.

We'll come back tomorrow

At first, the two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, talk about why they were there, so they
explain that they have to wait for Godot by the tree and they start to talk about the tree itself,
which is a willow.
Then, since they don’t see Godot, they start thinking that they are waiting for him in the
wrong place. They clarify that until he doesn’t show up, they’ll keep on coming to that tree
every day.
They start talking about the fact that they came there even the previous day, but they can't
remember what they did. They start to look around, I order to see if they can recognize
anything, then they start thinking whether they are waiting for him during the wright day.
They are not sure whether it is a Saturday or not. Then they keep thinking and they realise
that they may be wrong with the day, and that maybe Godot was waiting for them the
previous day or any other day. So they think that if he waited for them and they didn’t show
up, they’re sure that he won’t come again. then they fall asleep. when they wake up,
Estragon wants to tell his nightmare to Vladmir, but he said that he doesn’t want to listen to it.
The estragon says that sometimes he thinks that it would be better if they were apart, then
he starts so say random things and Vladimir tells him to calm down.