ace5c

BNW chapter 1

2009-06-07T19:12:00.000+02:00

Read the beginning of the novel:
Chapter One

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.

"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, "you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile …"

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.

Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it.

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction–"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa–at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.

"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."

Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.

He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded–bud out of bud out of bud–were thereafter–further arrest being generally fatal–left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos– a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.

"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he were distributing largesse. "Scores."

But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay.

"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.

"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't bokanovskify indefinitely."

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible–that was the best (sadly a second best) that they could do. And even that was difficult.

"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century–what would be the use of that?"

Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify–in other words, multiply by seventy-two–and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.

"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteen thousand adult individuals."

Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddy young man approached. "Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?"

"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Foster replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. "Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better," he rattled on, "in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to working with European material. Still," he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet."

"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and give these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge."

Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.

In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band. [...]

Aldous Huxley

2009-06-07T19:09:00.002+02:00

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is the author of Brave New World (1932) typical anti-utopian novel as Orwell's 1984.

Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sllep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism.

The book starts off with the director of hatcheries describing a hatchery to a bunch of Alpha students. He explains the fertilizing, decanting, and conditioning process of people which is, when you come down to it, pure brainwashing.
The book then introduces a man named Bernard. Bernard is an alpha, but he’s queer. He’s shorter and less handsome than the other alphas. Bernard likes a girls named Lenina. Lenina, however, is having a guy named Henry, and has been having him for several months. Fanny one of Lenina’s friends tries to encourage Lenina to move on and to try other men. Lenina goes out with Bernard and that date ends with soma and sex even though Bernard said that they shouldn’t have sex on the first night.
This society is organized for the pleasure of the people. Their God is Ford. They have sex often with different people, and their taught in infancy certain prejudices. For example, the babies are taught to be satisfied with their own caste of which there are five: alphas at the top, then betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons at the bottom. They’re taught to hate the country but like country sports. Every teaching has a specific purpose.
Bernard gets together with eleven other people and they worship Ford. They sing hymns (for example “Orgy Porgy”) to Ford and they experience Ford. They howl and shout to his name. Bernard, however, feels nothing. He shouts because the others are shouting and he leaves with an emptiness deeper than the one he came with.
Bernard suggests to Lenina that they go for a vacation to the savage reservation. Lenina agrees to go. Before they go, Bernard needs to get permission from the Director of Hatcheries named Thomas. Thomas tells him that he once went to the savage reservation and lost a girl he liked named Linda. Then he tells Bernard that if he continues with his behavior, Thomas will send him to Iceland.
Bernard and Lenina go to the savage reservation and they witness and “human sacrifice” where one Indian is whipped in reminder of Christ. Then they meet a woman that is fat and ugly but used to belong to the civilized world. Bernard figures out that she was the Linda that Thomas lost long ago. Linda had a son named John on the reservation of whom Thomas was the father. Having a child in this society was about as much a sin as being an adulteress in the Puritan society of The Scarlet Letter. John fell in love with Lenina.
Bernard had an idea. He decided that it would be good to have an experiment to see what would happen if a savage came to the civilized world. He wanted to bring John and Linda back into civilization. He pulled a few strings and was allowed to go on with his experiment. Linda was immediately rejected by society and by Thomas for being fat, and for being a mother. Thomas, quit his job as the director of hatcheries because he was humiliated at being a father. John, on the other hand, was an instant hit. The people loved him and brought Bernard instant fame. Bernard was able to get any girl he wanted, something he was not able to before. Bernard would host parties where John would be the guest of honor. One night, though, John didn’t want to show up. He rejected society and society rejected Bernard. Society went back to its old thoughts about Bernard. They thought he was a queer again. Bernard and John had a friend named Helmholtz who taught emotional engineering by the use of rhymes. John happened to have a copy of Shakespeare which he found at the reservation which he read to Helmholtz. Helmholtz was amazed at how well Shakespeare was at emotional engineering.
Lenina fell in love with John and John loved Lenina, but he was afraid of his feeling and felt unworthy for Lenina. One night, Lenina tried to seduce him but John ran from her, then attacked her calling her a whore.
All this while, Linda had taking one long soma holiday, and it was killing her. John got a call that Linda was at the hospital and dying so he rushed there to see her. Linda didn’t recognize him. She was having a soma induced dream about Pope, a guy she had at the reservation. Linda died and John wept for her while a bunch of little kids was led to the death hospital for their death conditioning. John was devastated. After leaving the hospital he saw soma being handed out to a group of workers. John runs there and throws the soma out the windows with the help of Helmholtz. This caused a riot among the workers and Bernard went to get help from the police. The police stopped the riot and supplied the workers with their share of soma. Bernard, Helmholtz and John are taken to Mustapha Mond, the ruler of this section of the world. He explains to them the necessity of stability and the reason he keeps them from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other old works of art. Bernard and Helmholtz are sent to separate island but John is allowed to continue living as he did to continue with Bernard’s experiment. John doesn’t want to stay so he seeks out a place where he can cleanse himself and live in solitude and finds a lighthouse. As part of his cleansing, he makes a whip and whips himself repeatedly with it. A few workers happened to see him doing so and the next day, John is swarmed with reporters. The next day more reporters come but this time Lenina is among them. She tried to seduce him but John whips her. That night, John commits suicide by hanging himself in the lighthouse and is discovered by a reporter the next morning.

Virginia's death

2009-05-04T20:27:00.001+02:00

video: Virginia at the train station

2009-05-04T20:25:00.001+02:00

The Hours by Cunnungham

2009-05-04T20:22:00.006+02:00

M. Cunningham, THE HOURS, 1999

Prologue

She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa. She walks purposefully toward the river, certain of what she'll do, but even now she is almost distracted by the sight of the downs, the church, and a scattering of sheep, incandescent, tinged with a faint hint of sulphur, grazing under a darkening sky. She pauses, watching the sheep and the sky, then walks on. The voices murmur behind her; bombers drone in the sky, though she looks for the planes and can't see them. She walks past one of the farm workers (is his name John?), a robust, small-headed man wearing a potato-coloured vest, cleaning the ditch that runs through the osier bed. He looks up at her, nods, looks down again into the brown water. As she passes him on her way to the river she thinks of how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch in an osier bed. She herself has failed. She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. Patches of sky shine in puddles left over from last night's rain. Her shoes sink slightly into the soft earth. She has failed, and now the voices are back, muttering indistinctly just beyond the range of her vision, behind her, here, no, turn and they've gone somewhere else. The voices are back and the headache is approaching as surely as rain, the headache that will crush whatever is she and replace her with itself. The headache is approaching and it seems (is she or is she not conjuring them herself?) that the bombers have appeared again in the sky. She reaches the embankment, climbs over and down again to the river. There's a fisherman upriver, far away, he won't notice her, will he? She begins searching for a stone. She works quickly but methodically, as if she were following a recipe that must be obeyed scrupulously if it's to succeed at all. She selects one roughly the size and shape of a pig's skull. Even as she lifts it and forces it into one of the pockets of her coat (the fur collar tickles her neck), she can't help noticing the stone's cold chalkiness and its colour, a milky brown with spots of green. She stands close to the edge of the river, which laps against the bank, filling the small irregularities in the mud with clear water that might be a different substance altogether from the yellow-brown, dappled stuff, solid-looking as a road, that extends so steadily from bank to bank. She steps forward. She does not remove her shoes. The water is cold, but not unbearably so. She pauses, standing in cold water up to her knees. She thinks of Leonard. She thinks of his hands and his beard, the deep lines around his mouth. She thinks of Vanessa, of the children, of Vita and Ethel: So many. They have all failed, haven't they? She is suddenly, immensely sorry for them. She imagines turning around, taking the stone out of her pocket, going back to the house. She could probably return in time to destroy the notes. She could live on; she could perform that final kindness. Standing knee-deep in the moving water, she decides against it. The voices are here, the headache is coming, and if she restores herself to the care of Leonard and Vanessa they won't let her go again, will they? She decides to insist that they let her go. She wades awkwardly (the bottom is mucky) out until she is up to her waist. She glances upriver at the fisherman, who is wearing a red jacket and who does not see her. The yellow surface of the river (more yellow than brown when seen this close) murkily reflects the sky. Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water. Almost involuntarily (it feels involuntary, to her) she steps or stumbles forward, and the stone pulls her in. For a moment, still, it seems like nothing; it seems like another failure; just chill water she can easily swim back out of; but then the current wraps itself around her and takes her with such sudden, muscular force it feels as if a strong man has risen from the bottom, grabbed her legs and held them to his chest. It feels personal.

More than an hour later, her husband returns from the garden. "Madame went out," the maid says, plumping a shabby pillow that releases a miniature storm of down. "She said she'd be back soon."

Leonard goes upstairs to the sitting room to listen to the news. He finds a blue envelope, addressed to him, on the table. Inside is a letter.

Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times.
And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can’t concentrate.
So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I cant fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know.
You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you.
You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that-- everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the
certainty of your goodness. I cant go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

A Room of One's Own

2009-05-04T20:20:00.000+02:00

Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist thematics are dominant in A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN (1929).
In it she made her famous statement: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

The book originated from two expanded and revised lectures the author presented at Cambridge University's Newnham and Girton Colleges in October 1928. Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She separated women as objects of representation and women as authors of representation, and argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary because most literature had been "made by men out of their own needs for their own uses."

Virginia Stephen Woolf

2009-05-04T19:36:00.003+02:00

Virginia Woolf was born in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, a friend of Meredith, Henry James, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot, and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Leslie Stephen's first wife had been the daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. His daughter Laura from the first marriage was institutionalized because of mental retardation.
Julia Jackson Duckworth died when Virginia was in her early teens. Stella Duckworth, her half sister, took her mother's place, but died a scant two years later. Leslie Stephen suffered a slow death from stomach cancer, he died in 1904. When Virginia's brother Thoby died in 1906, she had a prolonged mental breakdown.
Following the death of her father, Woolf moved with her sister and two brothers to the house in Bloomsbury. Vanessa, a painter, agreed to marry the critic of art and literature Clive Bell. He was the only person, whom she trusted sufficiently to show her unfinished work. Virginia's economic situation improved when she inherited £2,500 from an aunt. Their house became central to activities of the Bloomsbury group.
From 1905 Woolf began to write for the Times Literary Supplement. With Vanessa and Violet Dickinson she traveled in 1906 to Greece, where she carried Homer's Odyssey in her handbag. In 1912 she married the political theorist Leonard (Sidney) Woolf (1880-1969), who had returned from serving as an administrator in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Leonard Woolf was of Jewish descent, the son of a barrister. Woolf had anti-Jewish attitudes, but she loved her husband. Leonard Woolf had studied at Cambridge and from 1923 to 1930 he was a literary editor on the Nation. During WW I he was not called for military service, most likely due to his constantly trembling hands; and most of the Bloomsburies were conscientious objectors. In 1917 he set up a small hand press at Hogarth House, and worked as its director until his death. Leonard Woolf's works include novels, non-fiction, and his five volume memoirs Sowing (1960), Growing (1961), Beginning Again (1964), Downhill All the Way (1967), and The Journey Not the Arrival Matters (1969).

THE VOYAGE OUT (1915) was Virginia Woolf's first book. In 1919 appeared NIGHT AND DAY, a realistic novel about the lifes of two friends, Katherine and Mary. JACOB'S ROOM (1922) was based upon the life and death of her brother Thoby.

With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927) and THE WAVES (1931)Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism.
MRS. DALLOWAY (1925) formed a web of thoughts of several groups of people during the course of a single day. There is little action, but much movement in time from present to past and back again. The central figure, Clarissa Dalloway, married to Richard Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess. She spends her day in London preparing for her evening party. She recalls her life before World War I, her friendship with the unconventional Sally Seton, and her relationship with Peter Walsh. At her party she never meets the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Smith, one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war.
During the inter-war period, Woolf was a central character of the literary scene both in London and at her home in Rodmell, near Lewes, Sussex. She lived in Richmond from 1915 to 1924, in Bloomsbury from 1924 to 1939, and maintained the house in Rodmell from 1919-41. Their Hogarth Press had operated from the basement room in Tavistock Square.
The Bloomsbury group was initially based at the Gordon Square residence of Virginia and her sister Vanessa (Bell). Its other members were E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Leonard Woolf. The consolidation of the group's beliefs in unifying aesthetic concerns occurred under the influence of the philosopher G.E. Moore (1873-1958). By the early 1930s, the group ceased to exist in its original form.
Since 1924, the Hogarth Press had published works by Sigmund Freud. Woolf met him in 1939.
In the event of a Nazi invastion, Woolf and Leonard had made provisions to kill themselves. After the final attack of mental illness, Woolf loaded her pockets full of stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her Sussex home on March 28, 1941.

Art Deco'

2009-04-29T11:39:00.003+02:00

An example of perfect Art Deco' was the Crysler Building (1928-1930)

The Flappers

2009-04-29T11:19:00.004+02:00

The term flapper in the 1920s referred to a "new breed" of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to what was then considered unconventional music and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered "decent" behaviour.

The flappers were seen as brash in their time for wearing excessive makeup, drinking hard liquor, treating sex in a more casual manner, smoking cigarettes, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting conventional social and sexual norms.

The term flapper first appears in Britain, though the etymology is disputed. It may be in reference to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly, or it may derive from an earlier use in northern England of flapper to mean "teenage girl" (whose hair is not yet put up), or "prostitute".
While many in the United States assumed at the time that the term flapper derived from a fashion of wearing galoshes unbuckled so that they could show people their bodies as they walked, the term was already documented as in use in the United Kingdom as early as 1912.
From the 1910s into the 1920s, flapper was a term for any impetuous teenage girl, often including women under 30.

Only in the 1920s did the term take on the meaning of the flapper generation style and attitudes, while people continued to use the word to mean immature.
Flappers went to jazz clubs at night where they danced provocatively, smoked cigarettes through long holders, and dated.
They rode bicycles and drove cars.
They drank alcohol openly, a defiant act in the period of Prohibition.
Flappers also wore "kissproof" lipstick and a lot of heavy makeup with beaded necklaces and bracelets.
They liked to cut their hair into "boyish" bobs, often dyeing it jet-black.

Despite its popularity, the flapper lifestyle and look could not survive the Great Depression. The high-spirited attitude and hedonism simply could not find a place amid the economic hardships of the 1930s. More specifically, this decade brought out a conservative reaction and a religious revival which set out to eradicate the liberal lifestyles and fashions of the 1920s.
In many ways, though, the self-reliant flapper had allowed the modern woman to make herself an integral and lasting part of the Western World.

F.S. Fitzgerald's house...

2009-04-29T11:14:00.003+02:00

In October 1922 the Fitzgeralds moved to a house in Great Neck. Long Island.
Their house was a relatively modest one compared with the opulent summer homes of the seriously rich old American families - the Guggenheim, the astors, the Pulitzers - on another peninsular across the bay.
This, of course, provided Fitzgeralg with the basic topography for his novel and the distinction into a fashinable side - the Est Egg - and the unfashionable one - the West Egg.

The Windsor dinasty

2009-03-26T21:59:00.002+01:00

The Windsor family tree:

THE DANDY

2009-02-20T20:31:00.004+01:00

WHAT IS A DANDY?
A Dandy is a man whose trade, office and existence consist in wearing clothes. Every part of his soul, spirit and person is referred to wear dresses wisely and well. In fact as the others dress to live, he live to dress. Everything he does is designed to make his social presentation more elegant, as great care has to be taken not to appear too extravagant in his dress and never slovenly. The Dandy, through his life and dress style, enjoyed to surprise public with provocative attitude and motion. His whole life is dominated by a strong beauty desire. Refusing utilitarianism, he loves luxury and everything that is referred to it like chinese porcelains, antique furniture, silver plate, paintings collections, immense garden. But also perfumes, flowers, beautiful dresses, elegance, comfort, good manners, poetry and melodic music. His posture is royal, showing an apparent seriousness and a good boy look.

ETYMOLOGY
The term Dandy was used for the first time in the song “Yankee Daddle Dandy”, sang during the American revolution in 1770. The words of the song joked about the tawdry uniforms of American soldiers. The term Dandy was referred to a man that bragged of his appearance, in spite of he wore ordinary dresses.

HIS PERSONALITY
The Dandy wants to catch the eye of the false moralist with his attitude. He isn’t interested in everything that doesn’t concern his beauty ideal; for example money that is only seen as a way to obtain beauty, that is more precious. He wants to make himself a piece of art in every meaning. But in spite of his unusual attitude he doesn’t want to get himself noticed because he thinks that the real elegance has to make people pass unobserved. From the excessive care of his aspect we can note that the Dandy is the perfect narcissist. He is often homosexual; because of his exaggerated narcissism that pushes him to love himself so much to fall in love with everything that is identical to him, that is the other men. But it doesn’t mean that a Dandy couldn’t love a woman, that often arouses in him only sexual desire or is seen as a decorative object. Besides the Dandy dawdles places of vice, passions and frenzy as brothel and places where is played gambler. His connection with drugs is conflicting; in fact on one hand he shelters in it, on the other he doesn’t tolerate to be slaves of something; so he tend to eliminate every dependence. However this lifestyle has some limits. Dandy’s drama is to become old and lose the prestige and the consideration acquired in the youthful age. Besides Dandy is victim of a world that doesn’t understand him. This can lead Dandy to a depression that he will try to hide with a well-being attitude.

WEARING STYLE
Dandy’s wearing style is very refined and full of particulars. He wear coloured silk and velvet dresses, with stiff collars, velvet brands and coats, true or false waistcoats, peg-top trousers, yellow and pink gloves, turned-down collars, gilded sticks and violet boutonnières. And also tiny bowler, bright tweeds and comfortable trousers, waistcoats and jacket and often a drooping lily. Another frequent element in Dandy’s wearing is the following tie. Among the different types of necktie these are the most frequent. From the point of view of the colours he abhors extreme use of colours and, so, he chooses soft dyes like tan, pink, light blue and duck (that is a light yellow) but he dressed above all in black, grey and white. His habits of dress and fashion were much imitated, especially in France where became a trend, especially in bohemians quarters.

THE DANDY AND THE BOHEMIENNE
The Dandy was often associated to the bohémienne but this two figures are different between them. In Fact while the Bohemian allies himself to the masses, is a poor and is interested in society; the Dandy is a bourgeois man who lives outside the society and isn’t interested on its problems.

DANDYISM
Brummell, the first British Dandy, created the phenomenon of Dandyism during the 18th century as a lifestyle. This trend arrived in France where it was linked to the aestheticism and then it appeared again in England during the 19th century, with the figure of Oscar Wilde. This phenomenon exists also nowadays.

THE DANDY AND THE AESTHETE
This two figure, although they seem similar, are very much different. An aesthete is an artist who uses fashion to promote himself and his art; instead the Dandy is a man of society who uses fashions, manners and conversation to please, seduce and amuse everybody to permit him the access to the higher rungs of society.

THE MOST FAMOUS DANDIES
Among the famous dandies we observe Oscar Wilde who became a fashionable man for his way of dressing. He expressed his individuality with green and large boutonnieres, bright red waistcoats, diamond stud, exaggerated collar, thick tie knot, lots of shirt-cuffs, square handkerchiefs, and loud pin-stripe slacks. His clothes were anti-Victorian; in fact he didn’t bear the middle class hypocrisy that didn’t allow vice.

Art vs Life

2009-02-16T09:24:00.003+01:00

The novel presents a contrast between ART and LIFE.
Art is the expression of BEAUTY and FORM, while the main characteristics of Life are UGLINESS and SHAPELESSNESS.

Lord Henry encourages Dorian to treat his own life as if it were a WORK OF ART and to live fully and completely but at the same time to remain detached from it.
Here's a paradox: he must be involved and uninvolved, take part and remain a spectator of the event of life in order to comìntemplate beauty.

This contrast is particularly evident when Dorian walks to the theatre where Sybil Vane performs (chapter 4)

According to Wilde the purpose of Art is to show BEAUTY and to have no purpose (look at the epigrams in the Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray) and he stated that in a period when art was used as a tool for social education and moral enlightment by the victorian writers such as Dickens.
Instead, the Aesthetic movement sought to free art from this responsability.

The Trial of Oscar Wilde

2009-02-11T20:42:00.004+01:00

Oscar Wilde was involved in a homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.

Douglas was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury – the man who provided the rules for professional boxing. The Marquess was outraged that Wilde would lead his son ‘astray’ and became determined to ruin the world famous playwright. He had originally planned to ruin the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest but Wilde got to hear of this and Queensbury was banned from attending. Instead he decided to leave a calling card on the notice board at Wilde’s gentleman’s club. It read, “ To Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.” Wilde swore out a warrant for arrest of the Marquess of Queensbury on the charge of libel.

The result of all of this was a trial. The Marquess of Queensbury was represented by Edward Carson. Carson set out to prove that Oscar Wilde was, in fact, a homosexual and therefore that his client was not guilty of libel. Carson soon came up with the names of ten boys who Wilde had allegedly solicited for sex. He also obtained letters that Wilde had written to Douglas, revealing his feelings towards the Marquess’ son.

On the first day of the trial, Wilde attempted to have the proceedings overshadowed by his quick wit. But, over time, the dogged attacks by Carson wore him down. His humour was wearing thin. At one point the forty year old Wilde remarked to Carson, “You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously.” When the trial concluded it was obvious that Queensbury had not committed an act of libel – Oscar Wilde was a homosexual. And so it was. The judge completely exonerated Queensbury, going further to actually state that he had been justified in calling Wilde a sodomite in public. Wilde’s friends urged him to get out of the country to avoid arrest on what was then the crime of homosexuality. Wilde’s pride, however, would not allow him to flee. He awaited arrest at the Cadogen hotel, confident that he could win. Yet, on the 5th of April the police did, indeed, arrive to arrest the world’s most famous playwright.

Wilde now faced a second trial to prove the charge of homosexuality. Now the truly lurid stuff started to come out. Despite the evidence the jury could not reach a decision. A second trial was ordered. Wilde was released on 5000 pounds bail on May 7th.

The second trial began on May 22. This time the jury was unanimous. Oscar Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor at Pentonville Prison. At Pentonville Wilde found the going tough, almost unbearable. He was required to walk a treadmill for six hours each day. He became increasingly morose and unkempt. Jail officials feared that he was suicidal. Finally he was moved to Reading Jail. On May 18, 1897 he was released. But he was a broken man. Two and a half years after his release, on November 30, 1900 Oscar Wilde died while exiled in France. He was 46 years of age.

Famous words from Wilde’s discourse: "'The Love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.”

The preface to THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

2009-02-09T16:24:00.001+01:00

Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies.
An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.
From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.

À rebours by J.K. Huysmans

2009-02-09T15:39:00.004+01:00

À rebours (translated into English as "Against the Grain" or "Against Nature") (1884) is a novel written by the French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans.

It is a novel in which very little happens; its narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principal character, and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero, who loathes 19th century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation.

À rebours contained many themes which became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from naturalism and became the ultimate example of "decadent" literature.

Plot Summary

Jean Des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he absconds to a house in the countryside and decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation.

He conducts a survey of French and Latin literature, rejecting the works approved by the mainstream critics of his day. Amongst French authors, he shows nothing but contempt for the Romantics but adores the poetry of Baudelaire and that of the nascent Symbolist movement of Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière and Stéphane Mallarmé as well as the decadent fiction of the unorthodox Catholic writers Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly.

He rejects the academically respectable Latin authors of the "Golden Age" such as Virgil and Cicero, preferring later writers such as Petronius and Apuleius as well as works of early Christian literature, whose style was usually dismissed as the "barbarous" product of the Dark Ages. Schopenhauer, he exclaims, has seen the truth and he clearly expressed it in his philosophy.

He studies Moreau's paintings, he tries his hand at inventing perfumes, he creates a garden of poisonous flowers. In one of the book's most surreal episodes, he has gemstones set in the shell of a tortoise. The extra weight on the creature's back causes its death. In one of the book's more comic episodes, he spontaneously decides to visit London. When he reaches the train station, he overhears some English visitors, whom he finds disgusting. Feeling that he now knows what London would be like, he immediately returns home.

Victorian art

2009-02-06T09:22:00.001+01:00

here you can find the slides relating to the topic Victorian Art:

reply comments!!!

is

Utilitarianism

2009-01-25T15:34:00.004+01:00

UTILITARIANISM is a moral theory according to which an action is right if and only if it conforms to the principle of utility. Bentham formulated the principle of utility as part of such a theory in "Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" in 1789.
An action conforms to the principle of utility if and only if its performance will be more productive of pleasure or happiness, or more preventive of pain or unhappiness, than any alternative. Instead of 'pleasure' and 'happiness' the word 'welfare' is also apt: the value of the consequences of an action is determined solely by the welfare of individuals.
A characteristic feature of Bentham's theory is the idea that the rightness of an action entirely depends on the value of its consequences. This is why the theory is also described as consequentialist.
Bentham's theory differs from certain other varieties of utilitarianism (or consequentialism) by its distinctive assumption that the standard of value is pleasure and the absence of pain; by being an act-utilitarian; and by its maximising assumption that an action is not right unless it tends towards the optimal outcome.

Bentham formulated the theory, but the term was coined by John Stuart Mill.

Education Victorian Style

2009-01-25T15:26:00.004+01:00

Education was an extremely controversial issue in the Victorian Era. Some thought that education belonged in the church others believed that the responsibility of teaching the youth of England rested with the state. Then there were the people who did not want any kind of modern schooling at all for it would take away a form of very cheap labor. Victorians had a lot to learn but not many people could agree on what to learn or who to learn it from. And, while they were addressing these issues, society had to answer the question as to who could attend school. Should girls be allowed to attend, or just boys? Should workers' kids be allowed to go to school or not? How about the poor, should there be charity for their children to go to school and should they go to the same schools as the rich kids? All of these questions needed to be answered, however, it remains a mystery as to whether they ever were.
Education before 1870 was kept in the church and what was known as ragged schools. These were schools for very poor children and they were established as a result of necessity when it became apparent that such children were often excluded from existing schools because of their ragged clothing and appearance. Charles Dickens saw ragged schools as very unsatisfactory and quite jury-rigged: "at best, a slight and ineffectual palliative of an enormous evil. . .And what they can do, is so little, relatively to the gigantic proportions of the monster with which they have to grapple, that if their existence were to be accepted as a sufficient cause for leaving ill alone, we should hold it far better that they had never been."
Ragged schools were taught by volunteers who would teach the students the necessities to survive life in England. These schools were connected by the Ragged School Union which was very much like the modern day school board. They were forerunners of schools created by the 1870.

when, all children from five to thirteen had to attend school by law. In winter in the countryside, many children faced a teeth chattering walk to school of several miles. A large number didn’t turn up. Lessons lasted from 9am to 5pm, with a two hour lunch break. Because classes were so large, pupils all had to do the same thing at the same time. The teacher barked a command, and the children all opened their books. At the second command they began copying sentences from the blackboard. When pupils found their work boring, teachers found their pupils difficult to control.

The Detective Story

2009-01-15T21:46:00.003+01:00

The detective story is a genre based on the detective investigation of a mysterious crime which leads the discovery of the criminal responsible. In fact the story ends when the investigation is carried off and the method and culprit are revealed.
A detective story has as its main interest the solving of a mystery, whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at the beginning of the story, and whose nature arouses a curiosity which is gratified at the end.
It’s also something called a “whodunit” (who done it) because its main aim is to involve the reader with the investigation.

Features of Detective Stories
The father of this genre, Edgar Allan Poe, created a sort of fixed formula which was adopted by later writers and is still used nowadays. This model includes some constant elements:
- an urban setting;
- a mysterious crime;
- the detective who carries out a professional investigation;
- sometimes, the detective’s companion who can also be the narrator of the story;
- a policeman who is usually unintelligent and rather unimaginative;
- the importance of reasoning, including hypotheses and final solution, and of psychological analysis
- the widespread suspicion
- the suspance
- the opposition between “to be” and “to seem”

The Birth of the Detective Story
The beginning of the detective story can be find to Poe’s “Tales of Ratiocination” [“The murders in the Rue Morgue” _ “The Mystery of Marie Roget” _ “The Purloined Letter”]. The date of the publication of the first of them is also the date of the birth of Fictional Stories (1841). Edgar Allan Poe is considered the father of this genre because he created the first important fictional detective, Monsieur Auguste Dupin, a noble and refined man whose method of investigation was based on deduction.
This eccentric figure was also the inspiration for the most famous detective of literature, like Hercule Poirot, invented by Agatha Christie; and Sherlock Holmes, character created by Arthur Conan Doyle, who adopted Poe’s formula and made the plots of his stories more sophisticated; for example although he kept the urban environment, he sometimes introduced some exotic elements.
In the United States the professional detective, a new kind of fictional detective, was born and the crimes were carried out and then solved in the big American city. One of the most famous was Philip Marlowe, character created by Raymond Chandler; another famous American fictional detective-lawyer was Perry Mason, created by Earle Stanley Gardner.

Golden Age Detective Stories
The period between the two world wars (1920-1940) is considered the Detective Stories’ best period; in fact many detective stories, which earn lots success, were written. The stories of Agatha Christie are an example.

The detective story starting from POE

2009-01-15T16:50:00.003+01:00

Edgar Allan Poe is also acknowledged as the originator of detective fiction. Poe invented the term "Tale of Ratiocination"
The ratiocination, however, is not just for the detective; Poe does not allow the reader to sit back and merely observe; the process of ratiocination which he sets up is also intended for the reader, as well as for the detective. In fact, the story becomes one in which the reader must also accompany the detective toward the solution and apply his own powers of logic and deduction alongside those of the detective. This idea becomes very important in all subsequent works of detective fiction. That is, in all such fiction, all of the clues are available for the reader, as well as the detective, to solve the crime (usually murder), and at the end of the story, the reader should be able to look back on the clues and realize that he could have solved the mystery. A detective story in which the solution is suddenly revealed to the reader is considered bad form. Poe, then, introduces one of the basic elements of the detective story — the presentation of clues for his readers, and in addition to the above, Poe is also credited with introducing and developing many other of the standard features of modern detective fiction.

For example, M. Auguste Dupin is the forerunner of a long line of fictional detectives who are eccentric and brilliant. His unnamed friend, who is a devoted admirer of the detective's methods, is less brilliant but, at times, he is perhaps more rational and analytical than Dupin is. He never, however, has the flashes of genius that the detective exhibits; instead, he begins the tradition of the chronicler of the famous detective's exploits — that is, he mediates between reader and detective, presenting what information he has to the reader, while allowing the detective to keep certain information and interpretations to himself. This technique has since been employed by numerous writers of detective fiction, the most famous being the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson combination.

Poe is clearly responsible for and should be given credit for giving literature these basics of the detective story as a foundation for an entirely new genre of fiction:
(1) the eccentric but brilliant amateur sleuth;
(2) the sidekick, or listener, or worker for the clever detective;
(3) the simple clues;
(4) the stupidity or ineptitude of the police;
(5) the resentment of the police for the amateur's interference;
(6) the simple but careful solution of the problem through logic and intuition.

(http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Poe-s-Short-Stories-Summary-Analysis-and-Original-Text-Tales-Of-Ratiocination-Or-Detective-Fiction-Introduction-to-The-Murders-in-the-Rue-Morgue-and-The-Purloined-Letter-.id-145,pageNum-54.html)

2009-01-12T20:49:00.001+01:00

Charls Darwin

http://docs.google.com/Present?docID=ddpv6hj8_113gc2bmccs&fs=true&revision=_latest&start=0&theme=blank&cwj=true

Stoker's Dracula: notes

2008-12-16T17:21:00.002+01:00

Here's the link to a reduced version of the ppt.
Could it be interesting?

is

Count Dracula

2008-12-09T18:23:00.002+01:00

THE DESCRIPTION OF DRACULA
(from Chapter II)

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely
elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.
The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.
These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point.
As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.
The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back. And with a grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the firstdim streak of the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said.

"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

The Black Cat by E.A. Poe

2008-12-03T18:37:00.001+01:00

THE BLACK CAT

FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to
pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to
expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I
die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to
place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a
series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events
have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me. Yet I will not
attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror
- to many they will seem less terrible than _barroques_. Hereafter,
perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to
the common-place - some intellect more calm, more logical, and far
less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances
I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to
make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals,
and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With
these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding
and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my
growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal
sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a
faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of
explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing
love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had
frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity
of mere _Man_.

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition
not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic
pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most
agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small
monkey, and _a cat_.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely
black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,
which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she
was ever _serious_ upon this point - and I mention the matter at all
for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be
remembered.

Pluto - this was the cat's name - was my favorite pet and
playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about
the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from
following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during
which my general temperament and character - through the
instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance - had (I blush to confess
it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by
day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of
others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At
length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course,
were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected,
but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient
regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of
maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by
accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease
grew upon me - for what disease is like Alcohol! - and at length even
Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish -
even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my
haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I
seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight
wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly
possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at
once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish
malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took
from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor
beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable
atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning - when I had slept off the
fumes of the night's debauch - I experienced a sentiment half of
horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty;
but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul
remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in
wine all memory of the deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost
eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer
appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but,
as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so
much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident
dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But
this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to
my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of
this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that
my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of
Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or
a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should
not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is _Law_, merely because we
understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to
my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul _to
vex itself_ - to offer violence to its own nature - to do wrong for
the wrong's sake only - that urged me to continue and finally to
consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One
morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it
to the limb of a tree; - hung it with the tears streaming from my
eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it _because_
I knew that it had loved me, and _because_ I felt it had given me no
reason of offence; - hung it _because_ I knew that in so doing I was
committing a sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal
soul as to place it - if such a thing wore possible - even beyond the
reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible
God.

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was
aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in
flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty
that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the
conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth
was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of
cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am
detailing a chain of facts - and wish not to leave even a possible
link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins.
The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was
found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the
middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed.
The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the
fire - a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread.
About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed
to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager
attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar
expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven
in _bas relief_ upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic
_cat_. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous.
There was a rope about the animal's neck.

When I first beheld this apparition - for I could scarcely regard
it as less - my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length
reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a
garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had
been immediately filled by the crowd - by some one of whom the animal
must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window,
into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of
arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the
victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread
plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the _ammonia_ from
the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.

Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether
to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not
the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I
could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this
period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed,
but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the
animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now
habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of
somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy,
my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon
the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It
was a black cat - a very large one - fully as large as Pluto, and
closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a
white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,
although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole
region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose,
purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my
notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I
at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made
no claim to it - knew nothing of it - had never seen it before.

I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the
animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do
so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it
reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became
immediately a great favorite with my wife.

For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me.
This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not
how or why it was - its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted
and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance
rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain
sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,
preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks,
strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very
gradually - I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to
flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
pestilence.

What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery,
on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had
been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only
endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a
high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my
distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and
purest pleasures.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself
seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which
it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat,
it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering
me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get
between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long
and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast.
At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet
withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but
chiefly - let me confess it at once - by absolute dread of the beast.

This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil - and yet I
should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed
to own - yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own -
that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had
been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be possible
to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once, to the
character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and
which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange
beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this
mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by
slow degrees - degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long
time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful - it had, at length,
assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the
representation of an object that I shudder to name - and for this,
above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the
monster _had I dared_ - it was now, I say, the image of a hideous -
of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS! - oh, mournful and terrible
engine of Horror and of Crime - of Agony and of Death!

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere
Humanity. And _a brute beast _- whose fellow I had contemptuously
destroyed - _a brute beast_ to work out for _me_ - for me a man,
fashioned in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo!
Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any
more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in
the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to
find the hot breath of _the thing_ upon my face, and its vast weight
- an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off -
incumbent eternally upon my _heart!_

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble
remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates - the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of
my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a
fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife,
alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the
cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit.
The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me
headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed
my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have
proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow
was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference,
into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp
and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without
a groan.

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and
with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew
that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night,
without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects
entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into
minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved
to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I
deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard - about packing
it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so
getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined
to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the middle ages are
recorded to have walled up their victims.

For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls
were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout
with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had
prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a
projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been
filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no
doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert
the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could
detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not
deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and,
having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped
it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole
structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and
hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which
could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very
carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt
satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest
appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was
picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and
said to myself - "Here at least, then, my labor has not been in
vain."

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause
of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put
it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there
could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty
animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and
forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to
describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which
the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did
not make its appearance during the night - and thus for one night at
least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and
tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my
soul!

The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came
not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had
fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness
was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some
few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered.
Even a search had been instituted - but of course nothing was to be
discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police
came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make
rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the
inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment
whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They
left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth
time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My
heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked
the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and
roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and
prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be
restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and
to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I
delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a
little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this - this is a very
well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something
easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] - "I may say an
_excellently_ well constructed house. These walls are you going,
gentlemen? - these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through
the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I
held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind
which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the
Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into
silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a
cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and
then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream,
utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of
horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of
hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of
the demons that exult in the damnation.

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to
the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained
motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a
dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The
corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect
before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended
mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to
the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

The Gothic Novel

2008-11-24T19:24:00.002+01:00

This is the link to the slides about the Gothic Novel.
It may be useful for our next english test.

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dd5rxqxf_199fbsf9fhg

HEROINES IN JANE AUSTEN

2008-11-17T10:52:00.003+01:00

In the Austen's novels we can find the character of the Heroine. We can find many heroines in Austen's novel: Elizabeth in "Pride and Prejudice", Elionor and Marianne in "Sense and Sensibility" and Catherine in "Northanger Abbey". Elizabeth and Jane, in the novel, are two of five sister, they are different in comparison to their sister. They are described whit an exact disposition, Elizabeth has a strong personality, nothing can submit her, she has intelligent but has a lack: the pride, she is accused to be proud by mr Darcy. Elionor in "Sense and Sensibility" rapresent the personality of the autor; she has a great control of herself, she doesn't let excessive emotion get better of her. Marianne is sensitive and intelligent, but haven't the importance of her sister because she doesn't try to please by other people. In "Northanger Abbey" the protagonist, Catherine, is different by the other heroines, she hasn't a strong emotional power, but in the novel, when she is in the abbey, she act with judgement and good skill. She can aquire a great mental power. At the end of all novels there is a happy ending in which all heroines get marry.

Terror and horror in the past

2008-11-12T14:19:00.001+01:00

The concept of terror and horror is born from the idea of fear. In the opinion of Freud is frightening an encounter with something that is felt as threatening by our balance and so understood as dangerous for our life. This something is often the unknown, in different forms (both mental and physical). Freud defins this fear “upsetting”: it is that something new that causes wariness and fear, because is other from us and from what we know.
Later the generally fear has been divided in two kinds: terror and horror. Terror is more mental and is a fear that stimulates the person and makes him react; horror, instead, is more physiological and is a fear that annihilates and paralyses the person, making him unable to react.

The english writer Ann Radcliffe was the first one to define this distinction: in her opinion terror was carachterised by “obscurity” or indeterminacy, and it’s this one that leads to the sublime. She says that it “expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life”. Instead horror “freezes and nearly annihilates them”. She also thought that neither Shakespeare nor Burke looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, even if they believed that terror was it, giving to horror a meaning more negative.
The indian man of letters Devendra Varma wrote that “the difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse”.

“Horror vs. Terror” nowadays.

2008-11-11T15:15:00.011+01:00

What’s the difference between horror and terror?
Both involve fear and repulsion, but terror is more immediate and more emotional.
Horror is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence.
By contrast, terror is usually described as the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience. In other words, horror is more related to being shocked or scared, while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful.

CINEMA
Horror
Horror movies are characterised by scaring scenes that provoke emotions like fear, disgust, and abhorrence.
Stories and characters are often inspired to Gothic novels, for example Dracula (by Bram Stoker), Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson).
The plots generally include supernatural beings, evil characters and monstrous creatures, like The curse of Frankenstein or The Mummy.
Night of the Living Dead and the sequel Dawn of the Dead by George Romero are centred on zombies.
The Phantom of the Opera and Poltergeist are characterised by the presence of ghosts, spirits and haunted houses.
Other typical elements are Satanism and demoniac possessions, as we can see in The Exorcist.
Horror cinema also includes science-fiction, extraterrestrials, alien invasions and supernatural beings, like Alien (Ridley Scott) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Subgenres of horror
- Vampire films, like Nosferatu, Carmilla, Dracula and Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola (adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula) and Interview with the Vampire (based on the novel by Anne Rice).
- Body horror, or biological horror, a horror fiction in which the horror is principally derived from a sense of physical "wrongness" with the body. Some examples are Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski), The Fly, Eraserhead (David Lynch), Hellraiser, and The Thing.
- Slasher films typically involve a psychopathic killer (usually wearing a mask) who stalks and murders a series of victims, as it happens in Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13rd or Child’s Play.
- Splatter film is a type of horror film that focuses on gore and violence through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts. The term "splatter" was coined by George Romero to describe his film Dawn of the Dead. Another popular example is Hostel by Quentin Tarantino.
Terror
Other subgenres of horror cinema use terror instead of horror to scare the audience.
- Psychological horror relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, and emotional instability to build tension. Well-known examples of psychological horror fiction include The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) and the recent The Others.
- J-Horror is a term used to refer to Japanese contributions to horror fiction. It tends to focus on psychological horror and tension building (anticipation), particularly involving ghosts and poltergeists. Some popular movies are The Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water.
- Horror thriller, where conflict between the main characters are mental, emotional, and physical. Two recent examples of this include the Saw series of films and 28 Days Later. Other well-known examples are Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs.

LITERATURE
Horror literature is a branch of fantastic literature which has the aim of horrifying and scaring the readers using the technique of suspence.
The most important author of horror literature is Edgar Allan Poe. He was born in the 19th century, but we can find in his works, especially the Tales of Mystery, the same themes of Gothic novel like the taste for mystery and distress, the research of psychological aspects, in particular obsessions and nightmares.
Another exponent of horror literature is Howard Phillips Lovecraft, whose production (in particular The Myths of Cthulu) influenced the world of novels, movies, comics and cartoons. His works are inspired by his nightmares and they are deeply linked to the human unconscious.
Between the contemporary we can't forget Stephen King, author of many horror fiction best-sellers.

To who has to comment my post:
I know it's long and boring, but I can't cut anything.
Sorryyyy :)
Alessia

mi sa che l'ora e sballata

2008-11-04T19:04:00.000+01:00

profe io ho postato alle 19:04 minuto piu minuto meno
Come mai?

The Heroines In Jane Austen's Novels

2008-11-04T18:18:00.001+01:00

All Jane Austen's novels have a detailed description of all the characters, in particular in each novel there is a strong female figure.
The characters have a fullv range of parents, the parents in fact influence a lot the decisions of the children, so this relationship beetwen parents end the children has a great influence on the marriage choise.
In spite of this all the heroines manage to marry the real love at the end of the stories .
So these characters are called heroines because they don't accept the rules imposed by the parents, and also because they can distinguish themselves by the common opinion of the 18th century.
Elionor and Marianne are the heroines in the novel "Sense and Sensibility".
Marianne is the incarnaion of the sensibility and Elionor is the incarnation of the sense. In fact Elionor is much self-controlled than Marianne. They are heroines because at the end of the story they both become two complete women.
In "Mansfield Park" Fanny Price has a wealthy and beautiful cousin than can't be compared with her, because she is shy in the relationship with the other people and refuses to settle down for a man.
The heroine of "Emma" is Emma Woodhouse that is one of the most irritating and self-obsessed Austen's charaters. She has no respect for the other people, only Mr.Knightley knows how Emma really is. Under his authoritative aspect she grows up as a person.
In "Pride and prejudice" the heroine is Elizabeth Bennet, an intelligent person that feels himself more intelligent to the rest of her family.
The first impression for her is absolutely the most important thing for knowing a person, but her personality is modified by experience.
She is an all-around character.
Catherine Morland at the contrary is the most immature Austen's heroine.
She is "Northanger abbey"'s heroine.
In "Persuasion" we can find the most mature Austen's heroine: Anne Elliot.
Anne is persuaded not to marry her real love, but after eight years he still loves her. So learninig from her mistakes she never will be persuaded not to marry her real love.

audio file

2008-10-30T17:34:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody,
here's the track of the class test: listen at it again more than once to understand it better.
Let me know.

is

Hello everybody!

2008-10-13T09:05:00.000+02:00

Hi guys, how's it hanging?
Hope everything's gonna be ok.
Welcome in this new space for our chatting about english literature and grammar, an open space for debate and discussion...where you can also post your comments and publish your work!
Feel free to take part into it and bring your personal contribution!

ilaria salvadori