Terze prove di Inglese B

Tipologia B: Quesiti a risposta aperta

ROMANTICISMO

I poeti romantici inglesi percepivano se stessi come profeti dotati della capacità di vedere oltre la realtà immediata; di conseguenza rifiutavano la settecentesca imitazione della Natura: anzi, in essa cercavano verità universali e, ponendosi come mediatori tra la Natura e la realtà, attribuivano alla poesia, oltre alla valenza cognitiva, anche la capacità di ri-creare la realtà stessa.

Leggi attentamente il seguente testo e rispondi ai quesiti posti, nella lingua in cui essi sono formulati.

To Make a Prairie

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

   Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Answer the following questions using your own words as much as possible.

1. What elements does the author list as components of a prairie?

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2. Which of those elements is seen as the only essential one?

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3. What visual device does the author use to stress the importance of that element?

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4. Emily Dickinson is an American writer but her short poem conveys an idea which is fundamental to English Romantic poets: that a poet is the one who can see beyond” reality and who, by means of imagination, is able to re-create it. Discuss shortly these things.

rivoluzione industriale

A partire dai primi anni della Rivoluzione industriale in Inghilterra ha preso avvio tra gli intellettuali un dibattito sui mutamenti che essa ha determinato nelle condizioni di vita dei lavoratori. Certamente il lavoro domestico dell’artigiano nel primo Settecento era molto diverso da quello all’interno di una fabbrica nell’Ottocento.

Leggi attentamente il seguente testo e rispondi ai quesiti posti, nella lingua in cui essi sono formulati.

What, however, is art? whence does it spring? Art is mans embodied expression of interest in the life of man. It springs from mans pleasure in his life. […] It is especially the expression of mans pleasure in the deeds of the present, in his work. Yes, that may well seem strange to us at present! […] Yet I repeat that the chief source of art is mans pleasure in his daily necessary work, which expresses itself and is embodied in that work itself. Nothing else can make the common surroundings of life beautiful, and whenever they are beautiful it is a sign that mens work has pleasure in it, however they may suffer otherwise. It is the lack of this pleasure in daily work which has made our towns and habitations sordid and hideous, insults to the beauty of the earth which they disfigure, and all the accessories of life mean, trivial, ugly, – in a word, vulgar. Terrible as this is to endure in the present, there is hope in it for the future, for surely it is but just that outward ugliness and disgrace should be the result of the slavery and misery of the people, and that slavery and misery once changed, it is but reasonable to expect that external ugliness will give place to beauty, the sign of free and happy work. (W. Morris, from the Commonwealth Magazine, 1885)

Answer the following questions using your own words as much as possible.

1. How are art and work related, according to Morris?

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2. Which are the surroundings” Morris refers to? Could they be defined as beautiful” in the present? Give reasons.

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3. How will art and beauty be restored in the future?

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DOMANDE VARIe

• Which main features would you use to explain the term ‘modernism? What were its historical, social and literary conditions?

• What is the idea of time in the modern novel?

• “Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious and short”. Who are these words addressed to and what is their real meaning?

• It is an ancient mariner
  and he stoppeth one of three
  “By thy long grey beand and glittering eye,
  now wherefore stopp’st thou me?…
  The rime is a literary ballad. What are the romantic themes in it?

• Explain epiphany in Joyce’s “Eveline”

• In Joyce’s “Dubliners” we read: “He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest… “
  Does the title of the story reveal the main characters? Explain what the story is about.

• Outline the main themes which the following Joyces lines apply to: ‘His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead (from The Dead, in Dubliners).

• The Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, written by Wordsworth, is thought to be the Manifesto” of English Romanticism. After considering the content of the Preface and of the poems read in the classroom, answer the following questions:

a)  What is Wordsworths conception of Nature?

b)  What is the role of the Imagination?

c)  What is the task of the poet? 

• Jacobs Island

Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest of wearing apparel dangle at the salesmans door, and stream from the house parapet and windows.

a)   After reading the passage identify the novel by Dickens from which it has been taken describing the main themes.

b)  Point out the role of the workhouse as a social consequence of the Industrial Revolution.

• Differences between Wordsworth and Coleridge in writing the Lyrical Ballads (10R max)

• The idea of Art and Beauty in Keats (10R max)

• Main differences and similarities between Dorian Gray and Dr Jekyll (max 10 righe).

• Write about Dantes influence in T.S.Eliot.(max. 10 lines)

• Describe the plot of the novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep” by Dick, using about 80 words

• Easter 1916 in Ireland and its consequences (max 10 righe).

• “Ode To The West Wind”, 1819 By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The wild west wind is introduced as a natural phenomenon, but soon becomes a symbol.

In order the explain in your own words what is the symbolic meaning of the west wind consider the three worlds the ode combines: natural, social, personal.

What aspect of nature does it describe? (max. 4 lines)

What view of contemporary society does it imply? (max. 4 lines)

What does it reveal about the poet? (max. 4 lines)

• Explain the parallelism between Joyces Ulysses and Homers Odyssey and its symbolic meaning. (max. 10 lines)

• How do you interpret Dorians symbolic gesture of stabbing the portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde ? What does Dorians death symbolise ? (max. 10 lines)

• How did the studies in the field of psychology, anthropology, philosophy, physics and political thought contribute to the cultural crisis of the first decades of the 20th century.(con svolgimento)

• Conrads work is generally regarded as a bridge between the great tradition of the novel and the Modernist achievements. Point out the innovatory elements of Heart of Darkness.(con svolgimento)

• How are the themes of paralysis and escape dealt with in The Sisters from Dubliners?(con svolgimento)

• What are the main features of the dramatic monologue? In what do Tennysons and Brownings monologues differ?(con svolgimento)

• What is Thackerarys moral and artistic purpose in Vanity Fair?

• Explain how scientific discoveries began to challenge the traditional view of the universe in 19th- century England.

• How did the British conceive their role in the world in the 19th century?

• “All art is quite useless”. Explain this aphorism from the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray in the light of Wildes theory of art.

• What is meant by Victorian compromise? How did the publication in instalments influence novel writing?

• Can you find any criticism in The Importance of Being Earnest? (6 lines)

  start of solution

  The Importance of Being Earnest belongs to the kind of theatre called the comedy of manners”

  Whose most important aim was to amuse the audience, even if in the play we can find a light

  Criticism towards the Victorian society.

  Oscar Wildes irony and his use of paradox are widely used in expressing this criticism.

• Please, describe the characters of Oscar Wildes play The Importance of Being Earnest. (6 lines)

  solution

  Algernon Moncrief (called Algy) is a young man of fashion and a confirmed Bamburyist (in this

  Character we can find Oscar Wilde himself!). John Worthing is Algernons friend who poses as

  Ernest and his the guardian of his benefactors granddaughter. Lady Bracknell is Algernons aunt

  and a strong-willed woman of fashion who lives by the societys dictates. Guendolyn Fairfax

  is lady Bracknells daughter and in love with Jack Worthing. Cecily Cardew is the 18-year-old

  ward of Jack Worthing. Miss Prism is Cecilys governess. Dr. Chasuble is a clergyman.

• The Romantic poets of the 1st and 2nd generation had a different conception of their poetry. Explain the gap between the function of the poem, the consequent difference in style and language and the relationship poet-poem and poet-reader in the 2 books. (8 lines)

• The juxtaposition of present and past in the Waste Land: supply and comment an example from your readings (8 lines)