-the marriage of heaven and hell:series of prose texts where he expresses his revolutionary beliefs. In the description the poet descents into hell (Dante and Milton). He proposes a unified version of cosmos in which material world and physical desire were part of the divine order.

-songs of innocence and experience: he creates the opposition of  the innocent world of childhood and the corrupted and repressed world of adulthood. The same situation is seen differently according to the different perspectives :innocence and experience.

   - the Lamb represents the meek virtue pag 320

   -the tyger the opposer darker forces.  Pag 322

Some songs of innocence are written from children or children seen from an adult perspective. They focus on positive aspects of the human nature 

The songs of experience describe how the harsh experiences of adult life can destroy what is good in innocence and underline how weak innocence is. 

From this work we can understand Blake’s opinion: he criticized both position of the state and the church. He proposed a new revolutionary ,ethical and intellectual society. He was against the industrial revolution as it led to poverty child labor and prostitution. He was tough a supporter of the French revolution and the campaign to abolish slavery. Although he was very religious he criticized the church as he believed that it favored the fragmentation of the dualism of existence.  He believed that in the human nature exist two sides: love and hate two complementary opposites . 
For him world could be known exclusively trough imagination ,and that for this reason the poet has an important role. Only god, children and the poet see the world trough imagination and can truly understand the reality. Therefore he didn’t believe in reason and physical feelings.

Abry

VITA She was born as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, her mother was the first feminine writer and her father was a philosopher. Her mother died 10 days after giving birth and her father got married again, with a woman, who didn’t took care of her. Mary idealised her mother and used to visits her mother’s tomb everyday. Her father used to invite many intellectuals to his house, for example Coleridge and Shelley. Mary met Percy Shelley at his house, he was married, but the couple fell in love and eloped to Switzerland with Lord Byron in Lake Geneva. Harriet, Percy’s wife died and the couple got married. Mary gave birth to 5 children but just one of them lived, his name is Percy Florence. In 1822 Percy died, because his boat sunk during a trip. Mary published her most famous novel ‘Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus’ as a widow. She got sick and died due to a tumour. 

Frankenstein starts with Walton a man that finds Viktor Frankenstein trapped in ice, he was dying. Viktor starts telling his story and how he managed to make a not living creature to live. This horrific creature starts having bad behaviours, due to some rejections and starts killing people. Then the monster escapes to Switzerland and asks for a feminine companion, but the doctor refuses. So the monster kills his friend and his fiancé. Viktor, as a revenge, takes the monster to the Artic and some days after the encounter with Walton, the doctor dies. The monster cries over Viktor’s dead body. 

This is a gothic novel, with dark settings, and episodes of violence and horror. This is written as an epistolary novel between Walton and his sister. There are three different narrators, which are Viktor, Walton and the monster.  

Alessia Cantarutti

He began his writing career as a journalist. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth and they had 10 children. He left his wife in 1858 for his mistress and he died in 1870.

He produced an immense number of novels and each episode ended with a dramatic turn of events that provoked suspense in order to maintain interest in the reader from one episode to the other. His novels focused on social criticism, on the consequence of Industrial revolution ( Hard Times) and on child labour (Oliver Twist).

With his novels helped he the spread of unknown words in English and some of his characters names have become part of the English language (Fagin from Oliver Twist is now synonym of thief).
He wrote: Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), Hard Times(1854), David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1860).

The novel described the cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian England and the living conditions of poor families which were forced to live in workhouses where they were divided. In this novel Dickens expressed his anger at the iniquity of the Poor Law of 1834.

PLOT

Oliver Twist was an orphan who lived in a workhouse then he worked for an undertaken, but then he run aways and became involved in a gang of thieves led by Fagin. During one mission he got arrested, but eventually Mr. Brownlow rescued him. Afterwards he has been captured by the gang and during another mission he has been shot and taken in by Ms Maylie and her niece Rose. At the end we discover that Monks, one of Fagin’s accomplices is the half-brother of Oliver and Fagin wanted to kill Oliver in order to get his inheritance. Rose was also Oliver’s aunt. At the end Fagin is dented to be hanged and Monks died. Oliver is adopted by Mr.Brownlow.

Lucrezia Chiappo

- 21/04/1816, Bradford.

- Attended Clergy Daughters' School – her two sisters died and she returned to home.

- Her experience inspired her for Jane Eyre.

- Returned to the same school as a teacher and then became a governess.

- Went to Brussels with Emily to study languages and fell in love with Mr. Heger, but he was alredy married; returned home.

- Discovered Emily's works and wanted to publish them.

- 1848 the sisters revealed their identity.

- Branwell (brother) died because he was addicted to opium and alcohol and Emily died soon after followed by Anne.

- She spent some time in London .

- She married and in 1855 she died while she was pregnant.

She is a poor orphan girl brought up by her aunt. She had a ribellious behavior so her aunt sent her to an institution for orphans. She became teacher at the same school and became governess of Adele, the daughter of Mr. Rochester. She is not a beautiful girl but Mr. Rochester falls in love with her bc of her intelligence; before the wedding she found out he was already married so she went away; St John Rivers takes care of her and when she is about to marry him she hears the voice of Rochester in the night. She went to Mr. Rochester house and saw that the house has been burnt to the ground by Bertha (his mad wife that was locked in a room on the top of the house) but he is alive. Jane has been married with Rochester for ten years and her husband has regained his sight.

themes of horror, madness, passion and dreams – typical of the ghotic genre. The setting is gothic: Thornfield Hall is a old mansion which hides the R's dark past. Supernatural situations.

Rochester and Jane are romantic heroes. Rochester is a byronic hero; Jane is a passionate individual with a romantic nature (nature appears as a reflection of her inner self)

A realistic story – autobiographical – allows the reder to follow the events through the point of view of a woman and can identify with Jane's feelings and fears.

Social novel – critique of the role of women in Victorian society – being poor, Jane must struggle to have an education – it is only through education that a woman who is poor can live in a dignified way. She is an independent and intelligent woman.

She is a round character an also complex – she defends her independence and she also refuses to brcome Rochester's mistress after she discovers she cannot marry him.

- Viktoria Coppola

Rupert Broke is born in 1877. He studied in Cambridge. His writings are characterized by the  tendency to represent an idyllic view of the English countryside. After a serious nervous breakdown, he travelled a lot. He published his first collection of poems: Georgian Poets, which suggest he belonged to this group of writers. They dealt with a melancholic and elegiac tone. Brooke died on a hospital ship in Greece. His death was announced by Winston Churchill in the Times. 

He was a war poet, but he never reached the battle-field, actually, he died of blood poisoning  before going to fight. He has not experienced the terrible aspects of the war (trenches), this explains such of his exaltation and exaltation. Besides, death in war is not a tragic, according to him, but a noble end. Critics considered so him too superficial and sentimental.

THE SOLDIER

One of the famous five sonnets he wrote dying, is “the Soldier”, that became, in 1915, one of the most popular war’s poem, because the poet saw the war, not as a cruel experience, but as a way, for a soldier, to become an hero and to demonstrate the patriotism. The sonnet was successful because it celebrated the patriotic and idealistic mood of the war, before the British people’s discovering the outbreak of the First World War and of the horrors of the war.

I’s like a Petrarcan sonnet, because it’s composed by two quatrains and two tercets. If he will die

and if he will be buried in a foreign country, there will be a piece of that country that will be forever England, because it will contain his body which his English. In that piece of hearth there will be a richer dust (himself). England is seen as an other, actually, she bore him, she gave him a shape, she made him know, she gave him her flowers to love and her paths to explore. England takes care of her (she is personified in a human being) children. His body is an English body (happy dreams, gentleness).When he will die and his body will be buried, his mind will always think about all what he has received by England. 

SOUND DEVICES: Regular rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD ABC ABC

FIGURES OF SPEECH: personification= England is seen like a mother, his mother-country. This emphasis the love of the poet for England

LANGUAGE: The language used by the poet is high-flown, it’s emphatic (many words to express a single concept)

THEMES: Patriotism = the war is a way to demonstrate your patriotism and to become immortal. Death= a way to become immortal and a hero. Idealistic poem= how noble is to die for your mother-country

CORRESPONDANCE BETWEEN high-flown language, Conventional and traditional them, conventional and traditional genre

Questions: 
1) What kind of writer was he?
2) How did he consider war? 
3) Which themes do emerge in "The soldier"?

(-Lisa)

The Sasson family is a Jewish family and one of the richest families in the world. Siegfried Sassoon was born on the 8 September 1886 in Kent. He lived a comfortable life and began to publish small volumes of poetry. He is best remembered for his war poetry, which was written during and after the First World War and includes the collections Counter-Attack (1918) and War Poems (1919). He is the only war poet who lived until old age, in fact he had a fever at the beginning of the war and was wounded, so was sent back to England. He met several pacifists an became increasingly disillusioned with the war, his open opposition to the war nearly led him to a court-martial. In his works he uses a violent, simple language, describing the reality of the war with all its horrific details. He did not have a patriotic vision of the war, also because he thought that soldiers were sent to death with no reason. His war poems were criticised in England because of his lack of patriotism and for the shocking violence of his works. After the conflict he continued to write throughout his life. He wrote both prose and poetry, including a successful trilogy of autobiographical novels “The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston”. His post-war works where characterised by his spiritual concerns (Catholicism). He died on 1 September 1967.
"Suicide in the trances"
-Anna

During the romantic age there were 3 main genres, which had in common the deep psychological analysis of the characters, the use of dialogues to express the personality of the characters and the use of prose to tackle social issues and relationships between social classes.  

She wrote lots of poems (1775) but only 7 were published when she was alive. When she died her sister published them, at the beginning they weren’t successful, but then she was recognised as a major poet until the 20th century. She died in 1886 of nephritis and she was also afraid of living. 

She was not influenced by the contemporary writers, this is why she was so original. Her poems are short and compressed, she uses a concrete language and she refers to the natural world to convey abstract meanings. She uses paradoxes and unusual metaphors, simple words but with profound meanings. The punctuation is also highly personal, with extensive use of dashes, that substitute commas and full stops. The rhymes are imperfect and there are many assonances. 

The themes are universal, the Bible and puritanism were very important, as the death, the afterlife and eternity. Trascendentalism looked for meaning in nature, so she searched for the personal and universal significance in the natural world. 

- Lucia 

STYLE: His art was based on simplicity and essential prose, so he used short and simple sentences to convey action, dialogue and silences. Punctuation is kept to a minimum and he largely used a cinematic technique, which is based on cutting rapidly from one scene to another. He also used the iceberg technique, where visible elements support an unseen structure and symbolism. He wanted to represent life as realistically as possible, so he abandoned the descriptive style, to use a dry style based on dialogues, in which there is there is no intervention from the author. His style was revolutionary. 

The protagonist is Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver, volunteer in World War I. During the conflict he meets an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, they fall in love and she gets pregnant. Henry leads the team of ambulance drivers trying to evacuate the area and shoots an engineer when he refuses to help free the ambulance while it’s blocked in the mud. Forced to abandon their vehicles the men continue on foot towards Udine, chaos has broken out and the Italian battle police are shooting men and officers whom they accuse of desertion. Henry is taken but manages to escape and goes back to Milan. Him and Catherine are reunited in Stresa and escape to Switzerland, even though the man is tormented by feeling of guilt when he thinks about the men he left behind. The lovers manage to get to Lausanne, but the baby is stillborn and Catherine dies as well. Henry stays by her side, incapable of saying farewell to his love.