STORIA E LETTERATURA
INGLESE
Classe IV
Appunti delle lezioni della Prof.ssa Maria Pia Orlarei
Roberta Raineri
Prof.ssa Maria Pia Orlarei
THE STUARTS
In 1603 with the death of Elizabeth the dynasty of the Tudor was replaced by another
dynasty, the Stuarts. This was composed of four kings, two with the name of James and
two with the name of Charles. They came from Scotland that would be separated from
England till 1707. The Stuarts thought the king was chosen by God and so that he had a
divine right. He was above, he didn't have to respect laws and pay taxes. He was superior to
Parliament and to the law. The King so didn't cooperate with Parliament and didn't respect
the law, but he used Parliament only when he needed money.
The Stuarts didn't respect Parliament's will. James I discontented both the Puritans and
the Catholics. The Puritans were really strict . They wanted the king to be respectful of
laws. The Catholics didn't accept this way to rule and so they organized a plot against
James I (Guy Fawkes --> the story). Another symbol of rebellion were the Pilgrim Fathers :
it was a group of people, they were all Puritans and they decided to leave England all
together and went to America where they created a colony (Plymouth).
When James I died, in 1625, his son Charles made two expeditions: to Spain and to France,
they were both failures and so when he came back he had lost soldiers and money and he
had to gather Parliament, which didn't give him money, saying that he was unwise.
As a consequence the king imposed a lot of taxes and Parliament made the Petition of
Rights:

no man could be imprisoned without a trial, arbitrarily;

the King could not impose taxes if the Parliament didn't approve them.
Charles I made another mistake. He elected William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud
belonged to the High Church, to the clerical hierarchy.
In this period a really important group was the Puritan party. They were so powerful
because they represented the upper classes. They thought that if you worked hard you
would be rewarded, they hated vices and rejected corruption. They thought that if you were
poor it was your responsibility because you hadn't worked hard enough. Cock fighting,
bear baiting, Maypole dancing were all forbidden by the Puritans, even if they were really
popular in the past.
Really important is the interpretation of the law. In the past the king had to respect and
cooperate with Parliament. William I tried to impose the common law and to impose to the
church the same laws, too. England so had a tradition of common justice. It believed in the
common law (the law was superior to the king). In the other countries instead there was
the Roman law (the King was superior to the law).
So when the conception of law changed, people didn't accept it. That is one of the many
rerasons that caused the Civil War: the two factions were the Royalists or Cavaliers, which
were the ones who sided with the king, and the rest of society (especially Puritans)
Roundheads.
After King Charles I was imprisoned, the power passed to Oliver Cromwell, who was one of
the leaders of the Puritans. England was transformed into a Republic. The House of Lords
was closed and most Lords were killed. It was created a unicameral parliament that was
called the “Rump”.
Cromwell was a cultivated man. For him culture was really important. He was balanced, he
submitted rebellions in Scotland and improved the Navigation Acts.
The king was imprisoned and killed. Cromwell reigned through the army for 18 years and
the period of the Republic was called Commonwealth. Cromwell died prematurely and the
power passed to his son, who, unfortunately, wasn't as clever and skillful as his father. The
country experienced two whole years of chaos and anarchy. The situation was getting from
bad to worse when Parliament decided to restore the Monarchy: they called the late king's
brother Charles II, who came back to England from his exile in France.
The monarchy was restored.
PURITANS AND CAVALIERS
Puritans wanted moral rigour, simplicity, sobriety. They wanted to abolish everything in
the church that was unnecessary, and also the vestments of priests. They forbade many
common entertainments like ale-houses, theatres, animal fighting, maypole dancing. The
most important principle was "work for work's sake". They had to work hard and avoid any
form of entertainment.
Poverty was considered a sin.
Puritans detested elegance, they wore dark clothes, women had to wear a bonnet or a veil
on their heads (white bonnets). They avoided fashion and elegance, they were simple in
meals that where really frugal.
The Cavaliers' mot instead was "carpe diem". They used to wear jewels and elegant clothes.
They had long hair.
This separation in society is also in literature. The symbol of Puritanism in literature was
represented by John Milton.
JOHN MILTON
He is really important, he was a Puritan and his works mirror the three different historical
period during which he lived :Charles I, Cromwell and the Restoration.
Cromwell chose him as a Latin secretary, a sort of responsible of culture, a reference point
during the Republic.
Then during the Restoration he was considered one of the traitors and he was persecuted.
In the end he wasn’t imprisoned because he had become nearly totally blind and he was
quite old. In this period he wrote his most important works. He was able to do this because
he dictated them to his daughters. The works of this period are: “Paradise lost”; “Paradise
Regained”; “Sanson Agonistes”. They are all epic poems and he wrote them in four years,
between 1667 and 1671, then he didn’t write anymore.
Religion was really important in his life and so he decided to choose a religious theme in
his masterpieces.
In “Paradise lost”, for example, in fact, he talked about an event of the Bible.
What is unusual is that the protagonist of “Paradise lost” is Satan, and he is absolutely
different by the devil in Dante. He is clever, dignified, he wants to be independent, he
challenges God. He never becomes the monster that is usually described. Milton’s Satan is
almost a positive character, and he is quite like Milton: he is a rebel and he is independent,
he mirrors parts of his character in the character of Satan. Satan is an epic hero and has
more positive aspects than bad ones.
This story is neglected. The most important part is the fall that takes him in 9 days and 9
nights to Hell. Hell is absolutely different from heaven. Here there was dark and
desperation.
When he arrived there he said that “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven”. So he was
soon able to spread strength and courage to other angels that were there with him.
God and Satan had the same cleverness but God was stronger, he had more angels with
him, and so he defeated Satan.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY
The Royal Society was a group of intellectuals which wanted to improve science subjects
and that imposed a new method.
King Charles belonged to this society.
It was based on tolerance, pragmatic and materialistic attitude.
It welcame people from different parts of society (architects, aristocracy, …).
It was a great change. New ideas invaded England.
In this period there were three new scientific methods:

deductive method

inductive method

method of classification
In this period there were also new important scientists like Newton and Galileo.
RESTORATION
In 1658 when Cromwell died there was a period of confusion in the country, so Parliament
decided to call the king, Charles II, back. He came back from exile and the monarchy was
restored.
The country underwent a period of political crisis in some way: at first Parliament
controlled the king and imposed laws in order to expel Catholics from public offices
because they were considered fanatics. They were obsessed by religion and therefore
dangerous for the country where strict Anglicanism was respected.
Other important events are:

Dutch war: Cromwell at first imposed with a law ( Navigation Acts) that all the
goods had to be carried only by English ships. In this period Holland was
particularly interested in trade roots, this is why a war started between these two
countries and England won.

After that there was a great plague.

One year later there was the Great Fire. Usually fires happened after a plague
because people used to burn everything that had been infected.
Puritans said that these two events were the result of the corruption of the monarchy, the
result of God’s wrath.
In this period there were many writers called “diarists” because they used to write diaries
in which they described the Great Fire.
After the Great Fire the city was rebuilt; the most important town planner was Sir
Christopher Wren, who built St Paul's Cathedral and many more buildings and churches.
After Charles II there was James II. The first wife gave him two daughters that were
protestant. From the second one instead he had a son, who, being born from a Catholic
mother, was a catholic and he would be his heir.
Parliament didn’t want to have a catholic king, so it called back one of the daughters
through the Glorious Revolution that took place without bloodshed.
It was a success of democracy because Parliament had deposed the king without a war.
The crown was so given to William II of Orange and Mary. When William II died it went to
Mary's sister, Anne.
We could so summarize the most important British dynasties that had the power till that period:
 Plantagenets
 Tudor
 Stuarts
 Hanover: then they changed their name not to be connected to Germany
When Queen Anne died the king was George I of Hanover (1712). He came from Germany, so he
didn’t know the country, he didn’t speak English and so he was quite unpopular; this is why he
gave a lot of power to Parliament.
In this period two parties developed: the Whigs and the Tories.
The Tories were a sort of development of the Royalists in the Civil war, while the Whigs had great
popularity and great strength; this was due to different reasons:
-
they had capable leaders (Walpole at first, and then Pitt);
-
there was the Cabinet, a group of Ministers among which they used to choose the
Prime Minister (the first was Walpole).
The official residence of the Prime Minister was 10 Downing Street.
-
freedom of the Press
-
tolerance in religion
-
a general policy of peace: all the money concentrated in the country
But Walpole was accused of being corrupted. The Parliament was not so representative. The vote in
fact was not secret, it was controlled and manipulated by the great landowners. There were some
great families, like barons in the past, that held the power.
Moreover in this period there were some wars. The most important took place in 1756 and it was
known as the Seven Years War. All the wars were meant to control power in Europe. These
were made with different alliances to get the power.
The Seven Years war for example was between Britain and Prussia versus Spain-Russia-France
and Austria. With this England obtained its first possessions in India and Canada.
SATIRE
The main aim of the satirist is to incite the reader to laugh at a particular human vice in order to
invite him/her to consider an important moral alternative. The satirist must present the target in
such a way that we find constant delight in it. We must look at how the satirist sets up the target
and delivers his judgment in such a way as to elicit our interest.
The essence of good satire is not the complexity of the moral message but the skilful style in which
the writer tries to demolish the target.
William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751. The British Museum,
London
He wants here to underline that people lived in terrible
conditions, there was no police control on alcohol.
In his picture he is realist but a bit exaggerated .
William Hogarth,
Marriage à la mode, PlateII: the
Breakfast scene, ca 1743.
The National Gallery, London
It is set in the house of a rich person that
probably belongs to aristocracy. The
couple are wearing elegant clothes and
around them there are a lot of paintings
with gold frames and some relieves on the
fire place .All the scene is untidy, chaotic,
there are many things on the floor like
some books, a chair. In the background we
can see a man that is tiding the room. The
two characters on the right seems really
tired, probably a party has just finished.
The woman, who is stretching herself, looks like really happy, while the man on the chair is
exhausted. The dog is taking a female cap out of his pocket, probably he has spent the night out.
The man on the left has some papers in his left hand and he is looking to the ceiling in a sign of
excuse.
The house mirrors the moral disorder of the couple and wants to underline how people in that
period used to get married just to improve their condition.
William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, Plate
III: the Tavern scene, 1735. The Trustees of
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
It is set in a tavern, in an area of London
that was ill famed. Around the table are
sitting many girls with a lot of wine glasses.
The two women on the right pretend to rub
the chest of the man while they are stealing
his gold watch.
The painting represents drunkenness, lust,
greed, crime, lack of hygiene. It is a critic to
the behaviour of young, spoilt, aristocratic
men who attend brothels, get drunk and
commit crimes.
COFFEE HOUSES
Coffee Houses were not just bars but meeting places. They were opened only to males but they
were not so exclusive as clubs. They provided refreshments, especially tea or coffee. These were
also places where people made business transactions and discuss about news. Here people, usually
intellectuals and writers, exchanged opinions. Coffee Houses were so important in a period in
which news didn’t circulate yet.
They were born together with journalism.
It came after the abolition of censorship in 1694. Censorship was abolished but you were till not
allowed to attack institutions, the church, Parliament. Of course it caused the spread of a lot of
newspapers. In this period so a journalistic style was created. The first real newspaper was called
“Oxford Gazette”. There were also many more newspapers: Daniel Defoe for example created “The
Review”. There he used to talk about political subjects and foreign affairs.
They were all founded at the beginning of the XVIII century , also “The Examiner” and “The
Rambler”. The most important were “The Tatler” and “The Spectator” that were founded by two
journalists, Steele and Addison. “The Spectator” was created in 1720. It was particular because
Addison and Steele imagined that there was a character “Mr Spectator” that commented the events.
It didn’t have a political interest. It was neutral in politics and this favored its circulation.
Soon reading a newspaper became a habit. The aim of the journalist was to
provide models of behaviour to the middle classes that would get the power. These newspapers
don’t talk only about daily life but also about literature. Their main purposes were:
-
Improve society and provide moral directions
-
Revive the interest of people in old classics and masterpieces of English literature in
order to solve the problem of the spread of illiteracy
In England nowadays there are two kinds of newspapers: the quality newspapers that are without
pictures and mainly deal with economy, social issues, book and film reviews,and the popular ones
which are colored with a lot of pictures and talk about gossip.
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Many are the factors which determined the rise of the novel:
1.
The influence of philosophical realism: each individual can reach the truth
through his own senses and his personal experience.
2.
The influence of Methodism: focused on the importance of the individual, in
particular on the individual work and on the possibility of each individual to reach salvation
through personal efforts.
3.
The spread of the reading public, the spread of newspaper and the growing
importance of the middle classes.
4.
The circulating libraries: with very little money you can borrow a book. The
circulating libraries had very low subscriptions fees.
5.
influence of picaresque narrative (as Cervantes).
The novel became the most important literally genre in this period.
NOVEL: a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length with a certain number of characters
and actions that are representative of real life (with a complex plot).
In order to be considered a novel it must be of over 50 pages. The purpose of the writers is no more
to please their patron, as it was especially for playwrights, but, with the end of censorship, they
didn't have to observe the patron's will anymore. In order to earn money they try to satisfy the
audience. The language so must be simple because it must be understood also by less educated
people.
The novels were mainly realistic and the characters usually struggled for survival or for material
success. In order to increase the sense of realism the characters were given names and surnames
and the places were well described through insistence on realistic details (time and place)and often
the attention was focused on interiors like rooms, furniture, etc.
In this period money was the real goal, the status symbol. The protagonist of
the novel was usually self-made, practical minded, materialistic, self confident, very prudent,
endowed with common sense, suspicious.
KINDS OF NOVELS:
1.
SATIRICAL NOVELS: (for example “Gulliver Travels”) they attack vices, follies
and corruption. They are exaggerated, contemptuous and they use to elicit ridicule.
2.
PICARESQUE NOVELS: (Cervantes in Spain and in England we can remember
“Moll Flanders”)Here the character doesn't commit real crimes, he makes minor thefts just
to survive, he is cynical and he shows no emotions. Usually picaresque novels are not set in
a particular place but the characters move from place to place.
3.
EPISTOLARY NOVELS: (for example Richardon: “Pamela”, “Clarissa Harlowe”)
They are made of letters. The characters exchange letters that describe sensations, feelings
and emotions of each character.
4.
ANTINOVEL: it is paradoxical that a writer already upset of the bases of the novel.
In this case in fact the writer creates a novel based on new elements (for example Sterne
with "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a Gentleman"). The antinovel breaks with
the tradition of the novel, it is based on digressions within digressions, so that the plot
becomes really complex. In Tristram Shandy for example his misfortunes start when he is
generated.
5.
HISTORICAL NOVEL: (“Ivanhoe” by Walter Scott ) they are set in a precise
historical period. There are both fictional and real events and characters.
6.
BILDUNGS ROMAN: (“Oliver Twist” and David Copperfield) They follow the
character from his birth to his mature age.
7.
REGIONAL NOVEL: like the novels by Thomas Hardy : he sets all his novels in
the same place, in Wessex, to provide a sort of unity of setting and a connection between
past and present..
8.
PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL: (“The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James) Focused
on the mind of a character.
9.
MODERNIST NOVEL: In the 20th century values and reference points were all
lost. The writers completely changed their function in society. Many tragical events (the
Oòocaust, the World Wars, the civil war in Spain) had completely upset the situation in
Europe, so the writers created a new kind of novel based on the stream of consciousness.
Here there is no plot, no narration, only the mind of the character is displayed to the reader
with no intrusion on the writer's part.
10.
GOTHIC NOVELS: There are always the same elements, in
particular a heroine that is chased by a dark character. It is characterized by mystery,
darkness, bad weather condition and suspicious atmosphere. (“Wuthering Heights” by
Jane Eyre)
11.
ANTI-UTOPIAN NOVELS: After World War I the future seems terrible and they
were all worried about it. There was a pessimistic attitude, people were afraid for the future,
struck by the enormous amount of casualties. (“Brave New World” by Huxley, Animal
Farm, 1984).
DANIEL DEFOE
He was a journalist and a writer.
He was born in 1660. His family was a family of Dissenters and they so refused the authority and
they were protestant.
His life was characterized by misfortunes. He went in bankrupt twice and he also used illegal
means to survive and so he became a rake.
He didn’t become a journalist and then a writer because he was inspired, but because he thought it
would be convenient from an economic point of view.
He became very famous because he was really talented even if Queen Anne didn’t like him. She
thought that his works were offensive and for this reason he was arrested and then sent to the
pillory. But people instead of throwing him stones, threw him flowers and so after that he became
more famous. In order to be freed he denied his ideas, he changed his opinion and he became a
secret agent for the Queen. When he was around 60, he realized that writing novels was a great
business and so he became a writer and the last part of his life was much simpler. He created the
“Review”, he wrote political pamphlets and the most important one was “The Shortest Way with
Dissenters” through which he attacked both the Tories and the Whigs. Then he started writing
novels. The first was “Robinson Crusoe”, which he wrote when he was 59.
He had a moralistic purpose: he wanted to warn his readers not to behave as his characters.
He was the first to write novels.
In his works the characters are flat, they don’t change with the passing of time and external events
don’t influence them. The characters are materialistic, cold and money-oriented.
Another limitation is that his stories are not chronologically connected, but they are only episodes,
they are just a sequence of events. His novels are usually presented in the form o f a diary, which is
quite good because it is more involving.
Defoe’s novels have only one character as protagonist. This character is usually a rebel and he is
usually compelled by society to strive, to improve his financial situation, to make both ends meet.
These characters are alone and they have to fight against misfortunes. There is no sentimentalism.
Nearly all novels contain many references to God and to his goodness. His novels are usually not
really important novels, they are not masterpieces.
They aren’t perfect for different reasons:
-
the stories are not chronologically connected -> sequence of events
-
the characters are static
Gulliver's travels
The public in England had two reactions to Swift's work. The great majority thought they were
exaggerated. He was beyond the limits in order to shock and this is one of his favorite techniques.
Gulliver's Travels is a very complex novel and it could be read at different levels. The life of the
protagonist, the surgeon Lemuel Gulliver, is characterized by journeys. He lived for a period with
his family, but he soon got bored. At the end he decided to live with the horses because he thought
that horses are better than humans. It represents a parody of travel literature, he underlined here
the incapacity of using common-sense in solving problems.
It can be read also just as a fantasy book. Actually instead it is a political novel.
There are six possible interpretations of the novel:
- account of imaginary adventure novel
- travel book
- allegorical story
- political pamphlet
- satirical essay
- tale for children
It is characterized by different journeys. Gulliver travels throughout the world to imaginary places.
The most important theme of the novel is the contrast between rationality and animality.
In the first book the Lilliputians represent rationality. They reveal a profound knowledge of
mathematical rules and this has formed their brains. Instead Gulliver represents animality. He is
described as the body, he is led only by passions.
In the second book, in the land of Brobdingnag instead, the giants represent animality, they are led
by passions and they are dumb, slow. Gulliver on the contrary is skillful, smarter than them.
Among the giants there is an exception, the king that despite his physical appearance, is clever and
in fact he deserves being the leader.
The third land is Laputa which was dominated by scientists and philosophers that work all the time
but without results. He wants to explain that men, especially intellectuals, can't use their rationality
in the best way and the thing that characterizes them is the loss of common sense. There is so the
criticism of science.
In the last book rationality is represented in the purest form, horses, while
men are represented by the Yahoos, that are bad smelling; the horses are cold, unfriendly, they feel
superior.
Throughout the whole novel there are many attacks to politicians.
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667 - 1754)
He was born in Dublin but his family was English. He went to a prestigious college in Dublin,
Trinity College, but he wasn't a model student. Then he went to England and he started working
for William Temple. After that he became religious and he was ordained at first Anglican priest
and then vicar of St Patrick Cathedral in Dublin.
He became more and more conservative and created the "Scriblerus Club", formed by a group of
conservative people. He started writing pamphlets about different themes. In one of them he
attacked a Whig minister and he showed his political ideas ( he belonged to the Tories).
He had quite troubled personal experiences. He was confused, he isolated himself. He had a heart
attack. It was a slow decline.
He believed in moderation and in balance. He attacked the government and politicians because
they didn't use reason in politics. According to him in fact politics must control their selfishness,
their egoism using reason; the government must control anti-social tendencies in people and it
should provide a wise guide for the state. Good government should temper these tendencies and
make people better.
He refused any form of extremism, especially in religion. According to him, uncontrolled passions
were dangerous both in personal matters and in public relationships.
Everybody needs common-sense to solve the problems. Passions must be tamed because they
deprived men of their ability of thinking clearly. He seemed to be really rational.
His problem was Ireland. Ireland suffered a condition of widespread poverty because there had
been the failure of two potatoes crops and this was a great problem because potatoes were the only
form of nourishment in that period.
Furthermore, Ireland was exploited by England. In addition, there was also the problem of religion
because as Irish people were mainly Catholics, families had too many children because for religion
they couldn't avoid them or regulate their number, but at the same time they couldn't support
them in a period when poverty was a nightmare.
Jonathan Swift decided to write a short essay titled "A Modest Proposal" that shocked the readers.
It was written to expose the problems of poverty in Ireland. In it he described how the streets were
crowded of beggars with children, mothers, who couldn't support them. He asked other people to
find a solution to this problem. As a provocation he provided his solution: eat children. Landlords
will eat them because they have already devoured most of their parents. Obviously, it was
exaggerated but he wanted to shock the readers in this way, he wanted the
people of Ireland to react and improve.
Poverty in Ireland was due to:
- passivity, that is typical of Irish people
- Catholicism
- exploitation of England
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
He wrote sentimental and epistolary novels. Defoe wrote the really first novels, but his were weak.
All these are in some way improved in Richardson's. The most important works are "Pamela" or
"Virtue Rewarded" and "Clarissa". Both these novels are written in epistolary form.
He was quite a popular writer even if his novels were very similar to each other. In these there are a
lot of descriptions of interiors, everyday life and clothes. The final purpose of these is to analyze
passions and feelings. The environment is usually domestic (interior of houses). The main
characters are usually negative, they belong to the middle classes.
The most important purpose is the psychological analysis, the writer is sympathetic. The novels
are all love stories; one of them ends happily, the other instead is failure.
He had a purpose that is moralistic, he wanted to promote virtue and religion.
Clarissa Harlowe
The choice of the name is not casual. Clarissa is in fact the name of an order of nuns and through
this he wants to underline the fact that she is religious. Harlowe instead is similar to "harlot" that
means prostitute and with this he wants to underline the contrast between the two extremes.
She is a very virtuosu girl, but she meets Lovelace (= > similar in sound to loveless).
She belongs to a middle class family. Everything starts when her father wants her to marry an old,
powerful, rich man, although she is in love with a young man,Lovelace; he is just a rascal that
means that wanted her only for money. He convinces her to leave home without being married,
which was considered unacceptable. She becomes his mistress. She wants to marry him and to
preserve her virtue before getting married, but Lovelace gets her drunk and seduces her and after
that he doesn't care anymore about her.
Her family and friends didn't care about her anymore. She was alone with a man that didn't love
her, but was interested only in her money and virtue. She decided to die because this was the only
way to reacquire her virtue and become a Saint, a martyr. This was the only way to be respected by
her family again, so she abstained from food and she slowly died.
Clarissa rebels against her father. At first Richardson seems to side with young people in their
rebellion, but actually he punishes them and in the end he promotes the status quo. They have to
atone for their rebellion. He is not innovative but conservative . He wants young people to respect
the rules.
If we talk about Pamela we can say that she is able to climb the social ladder refusing to comply to
the requests of her lover and succeeds in getting happily married. She succeeds because she was
virgin until marriage. She really was a virtuous lady.
Richardson provided too many details and he reveals in this way his real obsession. He seems to
proposes virtue and purity but instead he is obsessed by sex.
His novels paved the way to modern novels even though they were not so perfect or good.
Furthermore epistolary novels have many advantages.
At first through them you enter the mind of the character without any efforts, they provide
immediacy. Through it it’s possible to the reader to know the feelings that cross the mind of the
character, it creates intimacy between the character and the reader. It is important because it
anticipated the stream of consciousness that would be the technique used in the modernist novels.
Another advantage is that it provides individuality to characters. Finally the last merit is to have
paved the way also to contemporary writers like Goethe, Foscolo and Rousseau.
FIELDING
He wrote comic epic novels in prose among which we could remember “Tom Jones, a Foundling”.
He took the novel to perfection.
He wanted to describe epic characters in a comic situation. His novels were structured and not
based on sequence of events. They are organized into a unity. For the first time his novels are set
outdoor in different places, in outside itineraries and the character has to move from place to place.
He has also a wide range of characters in order to represent all the society and also the characters
that belong to the low classes have their own dignity. Unlike Richardson, he is interested in society,
not in feelings and emotions of an individual character. He doesn’t have a moralistic purpose, but
he wants just to give us a portrait of society. He doesn’t want to provide Puritan punishment, he
sympathizes with his characters and says that sex is a natural part of life.
Moreover in his novels there is no exaggerated sentimentalism. His characters are ironical.
STERNE
He was Irish and he was quite peculiar, as most other Irish writers.
His father was an army officer so he had to move from garrison to garrison and he died when
Laurence Sterne was only 18 years old as a consequence of a duel.
After he graduated, Sterne took holy orders and became a priest. He went to England and he
became a vicar in Yorkshire. Then he got married with a quite well-off lady. She got him some
money and she gave him a daughter, but his marriage life was a failure and after a while his wife
became mad. He didn't become a priest because he was religious in fact his life as a priest was quite
unusual and he had many mistresses. He often got drunk and enjoyed sharing his misadventures
with a group of fiends called "The Demoniacs". He died quite young because he was affected by
tuberculosis, which was quite popular in that period.
He wrote "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a Gentleman" and "A Sentimental Journey
trough France and Italy". He wrote the second one after he toured through Italy and France to
improve his health conditions.
His novels are important because they represent the bases of the modern novel. He is quite bright
and revolutionary. The novel has just been born and he already upsets his rules (antinovel).
"The life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" is divided into 9 chapters. It is a bildungs roman
because he follows the character since he was generated. Early childhood is completely neglected.
We get to know that the novel will be strange from the very title because in that period the most
common title was "The life and Adventures of[...]" while here we don't have facts and actions but
only thoughts. The characters have weaknesses, they are obsessed by something and these are
their hobbyhorses.
Another old element is that there is a biographical structure that characterized the story.
Furthermore it has also a picaresque form because it moves from place to place, the character is
usually a rogue and like in Defoe's works there is a sequence of events.
The other traditional element is that the characters are both high and low. Like in Fielding's they
belong to all classes.
In addition, there is also a mock description of the character and in this he uses to be ironic, like
Fielding.
There are instead two elements that are completely new: on the one hand the association of ideas
(through which each person is related to his personal life and experiences); on the other hand we
can find a new conception of time(There is no chronological time, but mainly subjective one).
In all the work the female characters lack identity, they don't have opinions of their own. Tristram
Shandy is ludicrous, he is not really the protagonist.
Tristam's father is a Turkey merchant and he doesn’t care about his family. His hobbyhorse is
names : he likes names a lot and so at first he wants to call his son Trismegistus.
He is a really particular person. He is meticulous. He, once a month, winds up the clock and
associates it with sex: in other words once a month he makes love with his wife, who so associates
the winding up of the clock with making lo0ve.
During the sexual intercourse Tristram’s mother asks her husband if he had wound up the clock,
he gets angry and so the animal spirits got a wrong way .Tristan thinks that that is why he would
have a life full of misfortunes.The family furthermore can't forget the other child that died
prematurely.
Then there is uncle Toby, he lives with a corporal and his hobbyhorse is military strategy. Mrs
Wadman is in love with uncle Toby and wants to make love with him.
Sterne uses asterisks, black pages, marble pages, some drawings, blank pages... because he wants to
involve the reader, he wants the reader to be active. He wants to demonstrate that language is
characterized by misunderstandings (people used to talk but not to communicate).