Letteratura inglese del '900: riassunto

La letteratura inglese del Novecento: riassunto sugli autori e le relative opere di Samuel Beckett, John Osborne, Jerome David Salinger, Wystan Hugh Auden e Toni Morrison (5 pagine formato doc)

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LETTERATURA INGLESE: SAMUEL BECKETT

Samuel Beckett.

Waiting for Godot. Godot has a white beard. Beckett uses a country road because it is common and two tramps because of the meaningless of the human life and the absurdity. Plot. When the play begins, Vladimir and Estragon are waiting on a country road for the mysterious Godot, who send a boy to inform them he will come the following day. The two tramps are talking saying nothing relevant, just to fill the silence and to kill the time.
They are thinking about separation and even suicide. As opposed to the two tramps, Pozzo and Lucky. Make continuous purposeless journeys to fill their existence. At the end, Godot will never come. The message of the play is that nothing can be done by human being except waiting. Waiting means making the experience of the flow of the time, While we are waiting to someone who arrive or something to happen, time becomes “the” object of all our thoughts and attention. In this play we understand the Absurd essence of the human condition. Man is trapped in a hostile universe where he is destined to physical and spiritual desegregation and to silence. For this reason Beckett created a surrealistic theatre, the Theatre of Absurd: he didn’t intend to represent reality but to represent the deeper reality revealed through dreams or nightmares, he didn’t represent action but he conveys a poetic image allusive of human condition, he expressed a sense of confusion for the lack of meaning of the world which appears illogical and absurd.

LETTERATURA INGLESE 900 RIASSUNTO

Structure. The play is divided into two acts: it has no development in time, and it is in a repetitive present. It has no setting but a country road and a tree. It has no plot and there is no action. The characters have not really a conversation in the sense that they do not reveal information about their present situation.
Symmetric structure
The play is divided into two halves parts by a tree. The human race is divided into 4 parts: Didi-Gogo, Pozzo-Lucky and then into 2 parts again: the boy and Godot's sort.
Characters. Vladimir and Estragon or Didi and Gogo are never described as tramps: they are two human being concerned with the question about nature, world and God. They are complementary, two different aspects of a single whole. Vladimir is more rational; Estragon is more subconscious, and sceptical about Godot. Pozzo and Lucky are linked by a rope, as master and servant. Lucky is servish and represents the power of the mind and Pozzo is the oppressor and represents the power of the body. Godot means little God and the play has so a religious interpretation.
The lack of coherence
The play presents the Absurd as the essence of the human condition; there is no heroism and the only possible reality for them is endless waiting.
The comic and the tragic:
Beckett's pessimism is intensified by his perception of the meaningless of human life and by his notion of time as a series of meaningless events.
The language. The language of the play is informal and there is a lack of communication shown by silence, pauses and gags. The play was originally written in French because Beckett can think simply and he can reduce speech to its essentially.
Influences.
Pirandello and Brecht. Pirandello’s. Things can be seen in opposite way from what he really appears. This reversed things that is the reflection which goes behind human convention, is the so called humour. Brecht instead chose the technique of estrangement, where the audience is asked to play an active role within the theatrical performance. Beckett’s denies the alienating humour conditions and uses the estrangement technique but is the whole life to be alienating.

LETTERATURA INGLESE LIBRI

John Osborne. The themes are isolation and frustration. Porter is against all middle class values and social injustices. He works in a market store. He has married an upper middle class for revenge and to improve his situation.
The Angry Young Men
The movement represented a revolt against their age, a rejection of traditional values and an aspiration to something different. They have some quarrel (litigio) with the events and aspects of the time:
1) the fall of Winston Churchill’s Cabinet (politica) in 1945.
2)The dissolution of the Colonial Empire.
3) the end of socialist revolution in 1951.
4)The disillusionment of many people in politic.