Programma di letteratura inglese per l'ultimo anno di liceo linguistico

S S.T.Coleridge “The rime of the ancient mariner” It's a ballad because the poets of romanticism loved middle-age. This ballad is divided into seven parts, each introduced by a short summary of the story so far. It was composed between 1797 and 1798 and was published as the opening poem of the Lyrical Ballads. It tells the story of a mariner who commits the crime of killing an albatross and of his subsequent punishment. The story is told by the mariner himself who finds himself at a wedding feast and begins recounting his sad story to one of the guests. The other members of the ship's crew were also punished for justifying the mariner's crime, but while he survives to tell the tale, they all die from thirst. However, the mariner's survival marks the beginning of his punishment. He must bear the burden of guilt for the rest of his days, and so he travels around telling his story to the people he meets, hoping in this way to teach them to respect and love all God's creatures. The main characters are two: an old mariner and a young boy. The story is divided in present and past because in the present the old mariner tells at a young boy a story happened in the past. The Story (Present) There was a wedding party where an old man stopped just one of three young boys to tell him something happened to him in the past. He stopped just one of them because only this young boy needs to hear this story. (Past) The old man was in the ocean with his crew and they sealed to the South. At the beginning it was a very quiet journey but when they arrived at the line, a storm full of wind brought the ship to the South Pole. There was no living been but only ice and the ship can't moved. Suddenly an albatross arrived and the ice broke up. The crew called the albatross “the bird of goodomen” because it means that land is near and now the ship can passed. The weather is not too fine, so they returned to North and the albatross came everyday to the ship for food or to play with the crew. But one of this day, the mariner killed the albatross. At the beginning the crew told off the mariner but, when the fog disappeared, the crew called the albatross “bird of illomen” and they became accomplices. The ship returned to the line and then stopped. Time passed but everything was still and the ship can't moved. So the crew wanted to make the mariner guilt and they put the albatross round his neck as a christian symbol. Suddenly they saw a ship coming from high, it was a phantom ship with two women: life in death (or spectre woman) and death (or death-mate). Death and Life-in-death have diced for the ship's crew and the mariner. Death wins the crew and Life-in-death the old mariner. The crew is only accomplice, the mariner is the real guilty. So the crew died and the mariner was condamned to live like he was death. He was alone with the corps but he still didn't recognised his guilty. Then he saw two sea-snakes and he realized that nature and a