1. THE MODERN AGE 1890 - 1930 Eleonora Simionato 5^ALS A.S 2014 – 2015
Liceo Scientifico "A. Einstein"

2. The crisis: It was characterized by the fears and doubts of people.
It is a crisis of the principle traditional values.
There are no other values that replaced traditional values.
The begininng of the century was characterized by discoveries and industrialization that brutalized men: they were totally negletted.

3. What do countries do?
They become stranger: there was a struggle for the domination of the World
1914, First World War: the turning poit in the history of the world. It is the event that shocked a whole generation
Economic depression ( ) had caused serious unemployment among the working class (the new social class) state exercise some control of the economy. This is the basis of the modern Welfare State

4. The Communist Manifesto (1848): Marx suggested to establish a socialist society. He offered an optimistic secure view of the future
Darwin demonstrated that human beings don't descend by God (some people didn't believe in that theory)
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the people experienced insecurity, doubt and a sense of isolation

5. Literature
The fears of people are in the works of writers but they produced different responses
T. Hardy and J. Conrad: they believed in cultivating a stoical dignity
V. Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster: they found in personale relationship a substitute for the divine love
Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton adn T. S. Eliot: they decided to ignore their rational doubts and become Christians
G. B. Show and H. G Wells: they dedicated themselves to social reform, trying to improve society
There was no set of values. They left their characters to speak for themselves, to present their own version of reality, without offer the reader an alternative point of view.

6. Relativity of knowledge
Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics were shown to rest on false assumptions
A. Einstein (1906): General Theory of Relativity said that space and time didn't exist as absolute phenomena
H. Bergson amd W. James argued that past and future exist together with the present in people's mind ("stream of consciousness")
S. Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams said that people's behaviour depends on the unconscious part of their minds

7. The hidden meaning
C. Jung: In Psychology of the Unconscious said that a basic element of man's unconscious mind was formed by his racial memory, the primitive memory conditioning by the experience.
Only the psychologist and the poet can discover these hidden meaning.
The French Symbolist poets had tried to give a sense to their impressions. They influenced the writers of the Aesthetic Movement.

8. Reaction against Victorian traditions
Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot broke completely with the Victorian tradition.
The critical writings of T. E. Hulme: he condemned the Romantic idea that art was only a matter of self- expression on the part of the artist and he believed it should be impersonal in the way that Neo- Classicism had been.
The Imagist Movement=poetry which reflected cold, mechanical reality of the modern world

9. The novel
New dramatic novel: the narrator is invisible, characters tell and represents the story. The story is self-told. The reader has the task to discover the meanings.
Old novel: the narrator is omniscient, always present and visible both in 3rd person and 1st person narrations and most of the times protagonist and author coincide.
Old Vs new novel: the structure of the old novel was essentially narrative, instead the new novel was drammatic.

10. Eliot
He sees myth and ritual as a potential means of the ordering and trasforming into significance contemporary experience
He complains that people have underestimated the importance of the Odyssey parallel as a structural device
Eliot Vs Joyce: by compression and allusion Eliot condenses it where Joyce expands the moment almost to infinitude, but both resort to a mythology

11. Eliot's objective correlative
"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of arte is by findind an "objective correlative"; in the other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which sall be the formula of that particoular emotion; such that when the external facts which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is emmediately evoked"
On Hamlet,1919
It is an artistic creation that requires an exquisite balance between forma and matter

12. Anthropology and J. Fraser
J. Fraser, The Golden Bough: new interest in mythology and pre-history which arose out of the Symbolist Movement and from the theories of Darwin.
The sources of art lay in the "unconscious": in writing and painting we use ancient symbols without being aware consciously
He discussed primeval customs, fertility rites, etc and he wished to investigate "the solid layer of savagery beneath the crust of society"