ENGLISH LITERATURE (INGLESE)

Historic Context:

The 18th century has been a period full of great events: it’s now famous for the changes in the political, social and economical life.

This is the time of the industry revolution. The positive factors of this period are: an increasing economic development, the new sciences applied to industry work, the increasing of trade (domestic and colonial), the population rise, the gradual agricultural revolution, a series of new productions and the improvement of domestic transport.

The negative effects of this economic movement are basically two. First, the difference between rich and poor became more and more deep, then, the other problem is the enclosure of the lands, that took away the great part of the common lands.

The social movement from countryside to the polluted industry cities started to create problems, especially for the worse living conditions.

The factory labourers had  long working hours, low wages, and bad living conditions.

Women and children started to work in the new industries, even though without any rights.

Politic Context:

The Stuart’s dynasty ended in 1714 with Queen Anne. She hadn’t any direct heir. The other members of the royal family were Catholics, and Catholics couldn’t come to the throne of England. The nearest heir found was George I, an important member of a noble German family called Hannover.

We remember George III because he reigned for over sixty years (from 1760 until 1820) in a period of political stability and economic expansion.

Britain fought against France and even against his American colonies that gained independence after a long war.

Britain was the greatest country in the world trade.

Cultural Point of view:

The Enlightenment introduced concepts like liberty, equality ,freedom and independence. Enlightenment is a philosophic movement that influenced the way of thinking.

Neoclassicism, instead, was an artistic-literary current, that influenced the way of writing and composing poems.

In the last 30 years of the 18^th century there’s the gradually transition to the Early Romantic age. The rationalism of the last period was substituted by a new interest in emotions and feelings.

The individual aspects of human life, the introspection, the importance of the subject, the humble everyday-life, the primitive and simple culture were the main characteristics of this period.

The ideas of “melancholy” and “misery”, the importance of the opposites like life and death, good and evil, emotion and reason, were fundamental.

The vision of the Nature changed. Nature became something real and dynamic, a living being..

Beauty is something perceived differently by each mind, each subject.

The concept of Sublime expresses the contrary of beauty. It is the inquietude perceived in front of something magnificent, powerful, limitless. Sublime is the highest emotion you can feel mixed with fear. Sublime is often considered something strange, a mixture of horror and pleasure. Sometimes it’s compared with the night, and the day is the opposite idea of Beauty.

Sublime is examined by Burke, for the literature, and by Kant ,for the philosophical point of view.

The Gothic novel is associated to the idea of sublime. It expresses the taste for strange situations,  deep emotions, darkness, fear and the dimension of the supernatural.

The new generation of poets left behind the impersonal way of writing, the loud and noble style of the classical. They started a new subjective and reflective way of writing poems.

The Graveyard school was a group of early-romantic poets. They set their compositions in cemeteries, or in places like graveyards and churchyards (a series of tumuls distributed around a church, especially in the small Britannic villages).

The main themes of their poetry are: the cult of simple life, the sense of misery, the research of the sublime and the interest in great events of human life.

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