21.09.

16

Ricevimento giovedì alle 10.30

NARRATOLOGY
1984
Joyce -> he works on his narratologic technic
Kipling, KIM -> Norton critical edition

The Waste Land -> Bur Edition (it is the most difficult text)

Norton Anthology -> study the introductions

Literature online -> texts well edited. Critisism: you can find a number of essays and critical
material, and the Cambridge Companion = series of books you can download devoted
either to specify authors or to some problems. Each is made of different chapters, and
each chapter is written by a different specialist in that field. There's also Cambridge
Companion for handbooks on history (in place of the NA)

Difference between a literary text and a non literary text: how a literary text function as
opposed to a non literary text?
A literary text is not telling a true story. They tell some kind of truth trough those lies.
A literary text is usually more complex, and the subject it talks about
A literary text as a work if art us something that makes us react -> it engages the reader in
a series of reactions, either philosophical, epistemological, ethical or emotional. Whenever
an artistically text is telling you something, it tells you not just how something is, but also
how that FEELS. In order to convey all these things together, you convey the importance
and the emotion of that something in a particular context. All through some particular
devices (metaphor, ...). The end of a literary text is usually to make the reader react,
both emotionally and rationally.
Stories are the because they raise problems, even though they are not real events.
Literature makes you understand and makes you FEEL. Literary texts are complex
because they do many things at the same time. Aesthetic qualities of literature may lie in
very different fields -> the plot, the text, ...
Why did or didn't we like a text? The effect of the text (disturbing us) may be its quality or
not. A text may give you new knowledge, new notions ...
Catullus was in love with a woman, but she rejected him and so he hated her for this.
Sensation if half love/half hate -> ODI ET AMO. Once he had written it down, it was
Catullus who broke the strains of a language to move beyond that and express something
before thought unexpressable.
We learn something about ourselves reading a poem. This is why we like doing it.
How does a text engage with the reader? How does it engage with the truth? Suppose that
Lesbia (Catullus' woman) does not exist. The relationship between the characters exists,
but they don't. How do the devices the writer uses convey their truth? How does the text
connect with the literature tradition, with the time it was written in, or with the time we are
living in? These are the questions that criticism tries to answer. The critic is supposed to
study and research to answer them, and then he publishes his own answers -> thats the
difference between a critic and a simple reader. Every reader is indeed critic.
In the history of criticism different critical schools have developed. there are schools that
study how the biography of the reader influences his work -> biographical schools. How
does a text relate to the conventions of his time? A typical statement of this kind of
perspect is that Shakespeare describes cities of his time in the same way
How does this text portray the working class, the social differences? If you look at a text
from a Freudian perspect, you can ask yourself: was Hamlet in love with his mother? How
could he overcome it?
FORM OF THE TEXT -> How is it formally written? How are the verses made? How are
the devices used? To answer any of these questions, means to know something else
about the text: the more questions you answer, the better you know about the text you are
studying.
Every reader brings his or hers experience to the text. You read a text as a woman, as a
man, as a son, as a mother... but a literary text can make you feel how it feels like to be a
woman or a man of a particular condition, a particular context (a queen, a king....).

We will understand what values, what things, the author wanted to highlight -> a way of
dealing with a text.
Narratologic is actually a way to try to understand why a certain text moves or does not
moves us. Why we like it or why we don't. Or what'a good in it.
It is a spinoff of a vaste cultural movement: STRUCTURALISM. Idea that the structure of a
text can be described. It has been almost everywhere abandoned, apart of its spinoff,
narratology.
De Saussure -> linguistic general (book written by his students based on his notes). It
became very important
His course was more cultural literature then linguistic, he tried to make examples taking
them from literature. So it became an important text both in linguistic and literature
studies.
A single instance in that particular system. Assume you could study in which way a novel
from David copperfield related to a system
How does chapter one relate to the while system of the novel? And how does a
particular part of chapter one relate to the whole chapter? How does a narrative frame
relate to another? Why does the death of ophelia in Hamlet relate with the rest of the
novel? How does it affect the other characters? How this affect the mind of Hamlet
himself?

Narratology studies the way narrative works. Initially it concerns itself in a dream: to find
out the alphabet or the sign system of narration.
A Russian found a basic grammar of Russian folklore -> the story begins with a kind of
catastrophe, then the hero is supposed to restore the status quo. He or she will gain a
magical object which will help him or she to get back to the situation there was before the
catastrophe.
The first narratologists were trying to map different works in order to create some
schemes. This is not a real system, it's something more complicate then that. They drifted
out the interests of scholars. At that time the idea was to find recurrent patterns. Now it is
different: most texts have something like a narrator, an author, an audience (real or
fictional), always some happening, some time, some place. -> categories which we study,
which help us understand the work we are studying.

22.09.16

TIME IN NARRATION -> manca

Difference between the told time and the telling time. Time of narrative versus time of
narration, or the narrative time and the narrating time. This is something which is easier to
see when you think of a movie -> you can have many years passing in a few minutes, or
one year of real life in a one year movie. Whereas I literature it is more difficult to define
time.
In literature it is difficult to know the time of reading. We see at least three different ways of
measuring time. Janette (???) Thinks that most novels are written summing up what
happens. SCENE -> the time of the telling is supposed to be the scene of what is told. It's
difficult to mea sure time when you don't have dialogues, but only describing texts.
Difference between a scene and a summary (he does not speak about slow motion): It
depends on the quantity of DETAILS. You can distinguish summary and scene only when
you can trace different telling speeds in the same text.
SCENE -> If the narrative time is one minute and the time needed for reading the details, it
is a scene. The time of the telling is supposed to be the scene. When you have dialogues
you're sure to be in front of a scene.
SUMMARY ->If the narration is a summary, it will have less details. In a few words you tell
what happens in a long time. You're not writing in every detail what happens.
SLOW MOTION -> If there are more details and the time needed for reading them is
longer then the actual time of the fiction, it is a slowmotion.
There are two other forms of time:
ELLIPSES -> some time of the story is not narrated at all. In this case as a reader you
must wonder whether you're missing anything important, or you're supposed to guess
what happened, or it is just irrelevant. Maybe something relevant is hidden from the sight
of the reader. The ellipses is faster then summary.
DIGRESSION -> it's either a comment on society, or the human plight, or another story.
The main story slows down.

Describing the text is just the first set of narratology, then we have to ask WHY it is written
like this.
Vescovi thinks that there are 5 ways.

THE PLOT
Russian formalists were a school of thought the 20s and 30s, they made essays about the
form of narrative. Literature was described in a very romantic thought as the work of a
genius. They decided to study what a genius consists of. Two concepts:
ESTRANGEMENT: a work of art must estrange you, defamiliarize you from reality, in order
to show you things in a different light, in a different way. Because they say that language
lays a veil over reality, so you no longer see a window there, you just perceive the concept
that there's a window. Language in a way covers things. Language shows you things as
though you were seeing them for the first time. The other concept is the DISTINCTION
BETWEEN FABULA (the plot) and the SUBJECT (the telling of the plot, thestory s it is
told). When you're telling a story, it is supposed to have happened in the past, before it is
told (usually). You don't necessarily have to tell it S it happens. You may decide to start
from the end and go back to the beginning -> there can be different ways af arranging a
story -> it is the time of the subject.
There is a kind of disruption between the time of the story and the telling time. Sometimes
you have stories which can only be reconstituted in the reader's mind, because they're not
told in a linear way. Only at the end of the story all the pieces fall into pieces. When you
remember that, you don't remember how it was told, usually you remember the plot, you
can hardly remember the subject (the way it was told).
The master of this kind of disruption in telling is certainly Ford Madox Ford, who wrote
The Good Soldier -> a story of a soldier and his wife, a story of betrayal. But you don't
understand the story because you are told of the betrayal (a love triangle) only at the end,
whereas it's happened at the beginning. All the time of the story is cut up in pieces.
You have this in Joyce also, in a larger aspect (also Mrs Dalloway).
There are other peculiarities of plot that we want to note:
ARISTOTELE -> two characteristics of the plot: PERIPETEIA (reversal of the situation).
According to him there are moments in a plot in which time is reversed. Then you usually
have at the end of the plot an ANAGNORISIS -> a kind of recognition, the moment when
all the doubts of the story are solved, when a character makes a critical dscovery. The
hero's sudden awareness of a real situation. He was thinking basically of epic poems and
especially tragedies. Sometimes in stories it is not said why something is a consequence
of something else.
Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, and after this he decides to take revenge of his uncle.
As readers, we assume that it is because he saw his father that he decides to seek his
revenge, and it is because of this decision that he pretends he's mad, and it is because of
this that ophelia goes mad, and so on.

KERNEL AND SATELLITE EVENTS

Kernel events are those particular events without which the narrative would not be the
same.
So, for instance, in Hamlet the vision of the ghost is a kernel event, or the final duel. But
the actors coming to the reign describing their abilities as actors is a satellite event. It
becomes a kernel event only when they enact their play, even if at the beginning it looks
like a satellite event.
Usually or often a story does not really allow you to understand immediately whether an
event is a kernel or a satellite.
But sometimes satellite events are even more important than kernel events. In hamlet one
of the most important parts is the monologue TO BE OR NOT TO BE. We can see a real
difference between Elizabethan period (humanistic way of looking at the world) and the
medieval one. For instance, if you look at the stories by Joyce, it's all about a girl who
wants to go away from her house (she leaves with her father), and she doesn't like her life
in Dublin, she has a boyfriend, a sailor, who proposes to go to Buenos Aires. The whole
story is about the background, the prequel -> at the beginning of the story, she's just sitting
in her house, thinking back at the past. What she does is basically nothing. In the second
part of the tale, she is in the harbour waiting for the ship to sail. That's it. The plot is so
easy, what's really important for the reader are the satellites, the words spoken by her
father and her mother, which she remembers. The satellites are more important than the
kernels in this kind of story. There are modernists who wrote many stories in which this
thing happens. So, in a way, when we arrive in the 20th century, the plot loses its
importance and it eventually becomes a kind of frame where you can hang your ideas,
your insights. But when we think about 18th and 19th century's novels, the plot is still very
important. But it's interesting seeing even in these novels when a scene begins as a
satellite, and then it becomes important. This has very much to do with the ability of the
writer. In tragedies this happens all the time, because it begins with expectation. For
example, the visit Elizabeth gives to BOH in Pride and Prejudice begins as a satellite, but
eventually it becomes turning point of the novel, because she meets Darcy there. Even
when Elizabeth visits Pepperly (one of the residents of Darcy's house), but Darcy is not
there, so nothing will come of it, she will just see Darcy's house. She would propably
confirm her impressions of Darcy. But that's the very way round: that's the very moment
when she understands that she was completely wrong about the man -> it is another
turning point.
AUTHORSHIP
When it comes to giving the royalties, you must always be sure who the author is.
For instance, Charles Dickens is the author of both David Copperfield (written when he
was young, first novel by Dickens written in first person, there are many autobiographical
things) and Great Expectation -> written much later, second novel written in first person,
also in this one ther6eare many autobiographical elements. The two novels are completely
different. The first one is really optimistic, it shows that Dickens was very enthusiastic,
about life, about possibilities of young people in the victorian age, there's evil mostly in
upper classes, and certainly only in cities. The best people you can find in the novel are
simple people. Great Expectation instead those who live outside the city are deported
people, crazy people, and you have a lot of people in the city itself. And all the biographical
story is abut a great sense of guilt, in the end you have no happy ending at all. It's a story
of a man who went wrong, because he wasn't generous enogh and he eventually
understands this. That he had been greedy.
It is very difficult to see that the author of the two different novels is the same author.
Wayne C Booth: an American scholar who created the notion of the IMPLIED AUTHOR,
which is only a fictionalised version of the flesh and blood author. MULTIPLE IDENTITIES
-> you re not the same person in every situation in your life. In either situation you're kind
of different. Also writers don't show their whole selves in their works. For this reason we
have what Wayne C Booth called the implied author. It's implied because we no longer talk
about the author with his autobiography, his own problems etc, but we're talking about the
author as it appears from his work. The author of a particular novel is topically the flesh
and blood author, but the implied author is a certain set of values, a certain outlook, which
may not coincide perfectly with the thinking of the real author.
Very often, authors write some things that they don't recognise in real life (in an interview,
for instance).
There are a number of authors who use literature to describe spirituality, but in
interviews they don't admit it. You will not talk about those things, but you can write them.
Sexuality is another thing written but maybe not talked about. The implied author is
different from the real author, and he can change even if the real one remains the same.

Start analysing The Fisherman and the Sold ->use of time

26.09.16

www.guttenberg.org

NARRATOR -> whenever you're reading something there must be a narrator. There must
be some kind of entity who has decided to either giving stage directions, or a kind of
editing. Dialogue is taken from what the author has said. Agency of the narrator -> to
choose what to say and say that. The narrator cannot invent the story, the author does it.
The narrator has the possibility to choose the words, to choose the characters that say
them.
We distinguish between two kinds of narrator:

1. the narrator which is also inside the story -> the intradiagetic narrator , who
belongs to the narrative word (f.e. Robinson Crusoe) (diagesis = telling). The
intradiagetic narrator can be: autodiagetic narrator : he is telling his own
story; heterodiagetic narrator -> he is actually part of the narrative word, he's telling
 something he has seen, but he is not the protagonist of the story. In this case the
narrator tends to be more reliable. If the narrator is the protagonist, instead, he's
less reliable (f.e. he tries to put himself in sort kind of light, there is some passion in
narration, the narration is not detached).
2. The opposite is an extradiagetic a narrator about whom we know nothing, we don't
know his interests, how old is he ... sometimes we mistake this kind of narrator with
the author. He can be: overt (he has no problems in attracting attention in himself)
the narrator is addressing the reader directly. Or covered -> he kind of diappears
(f.e. Red Riding Hood) -> he's just telling the story, he doesn't talk about himself.

I the 20th century experiments began on non reliable narration. f.e. The Moonstone. It
has 5 different narrators, and each tell the same story in 5 different ways. Unreliable
narrators became even more frequent then reliable ones. You have some kind of irony,
because in the 20th century we star having an epistemological problem of representation.
The death of God is almost an abandonment of religious belief, a very deep cut, cesura
between scientific thought and humanistic thought (philosophy). Science and inner belief
cannot go hand to hand anymore. You're never sure that you can understand and KNOW
everything, no witness is really reliable, no evidence
Whereas 19th century's literature is very confident, very assuring, usually those who are
bad are punished. This on the 20th century doesn't happen anymore, usually novels don't
end with an happy ending. In modern stories very rarely you find an happy ending, maybe
everyone dies, but some character gains some consciousness.
Unreliable narrators very often give you an interesting insight in ethics -> the reader is
obliged in kind of react to the story. You have to decide yourself, to discuss what is good
and what is bad. You must not take, f.e., Mr Dickens' word. Narrative becomes a tool to
actually RAISE discussion.
One of the features of the extradiagetic narrators, (who should be more reliable then
intradiagetic ones), is called FOCALISATION -> it refers to the question through whose
eyes are watching the story. The narrator is not always omniscient, he does not move
freely from one character to another. The narrator usually is following only one character
(what hes thinking and what he's feeling). F.e. Elizabeth thinking of Mr Darcy, you know
everything she's thinking, but we don't know what Mr Darcy thinks, we have to find out.
The FOCALISATION of the novel is entirely in the character of Elizabeth. We learn things
at the same time Elizabeth does. We're reading the novel through Elizabeth's eyes.
Focalization is incredibly important.

The narrator may change throughout a novel. There may be a chapter with a focalization
on one character, and another chapter with another focalization.
Another thing that can happen, is that not the whole novel is told by an external narrator.
Some episodes can be told by some characters, and not through the words of the narrator.
We still have a narrator that can decide to have a character to speak in his behalf.

MIKAIL BAKHTIN -> a Russian scholar who first gave the concept of POLIPHONY. he
studied contemporary novel.
Whereas a poet must decide which kind of poetry he wants to write, and it is easy to
distinguish.
Novelists must include many different voices and many different languages. If you read
one page of any contemporary novel, it is hard to distinguish
This also happens in modern paintings and modern photography. The novel is the
encounter of many different voices and languages, and this is what he calls POLIPHONY.
It needs a complicated society, a layered society, to have this kind of POLIPHONY. If you
have a kind of romance like chivalry poems, that develops in only one level of society,you
don't have poliphony.
Usually the novel is something written by the middle class, for the middle class. So the
language of the middle class is also the language of the narrator. Usually you have a
certain variety of words. The language which is influenced by the character the narrator is
talking about -> f.e. The narrator uses technical language related to the profession of a
particular character (f.e. in David Copperfield Dickens uses fishing language when he's
talking about the Fisherman).
The language of the narrator is a mixture of both the language of the narrator and the
language of the person he's talking about, even without inverted commas.

Characters are typically divided between ROUND and FLAT.

It depends on how realistic they appear to the reader. They can be the embodiment of a
particular human kind, and that is the FLAT CHARACTER. A real person may be the
representation of a type of man, but we can find out some particular characteristics of him
which set him apart from the type he represent, when we get to know them better, and
that's the case of a ROUND CHARACTER -> they're unique, like every real person.
When you're working in a particular condition (like a waiter), you meet people just for five
minutes, you don't really want your feeling, your inner thoughts to be shared with that
passerby, this is exactly what it means to have a flat character in front of you. When you're
working as a waiter, you don't really want to stand out from your characterization (as a
waiter).
Hamlet, is a round character -> there are certain questions which make him a round
character, but there are some questions which are not worth asking, like how much does
he weigh, it is completely pointless. Is hamlet glad when he finds that his suspicions are
confirmed? -> This is an inherent question. We should also distinguish between what is
real and what is true, epistemologically speaking.
REAL is referred either to what is the world as we know it, or talking about narrative,
referred to what is actually happening in the narrative world. So realistic is a kind of
narrative which simulates or copies the world as we know it, because it sounds plausible,
probable. Something that doesn't sound probable, it is called unrealistic. In modern fiction
especially there are a lot of tragedies with improbable things. As though probability was
divided between good and bad art.
TRUE refers to a PHILOSOPHICAL category, almost religiously. It is not so much
measurable, but it is true what portrays what happens with humans. F.e. for Catullus,
loving and hating the same person at the same time. It is a real situation, even if the
characters don't exist in the real world. There are a lot of things in fiction which happen to
be true -> the way the human society tends to organize itself in a way, the way humans
tend to act, etc.

SPACE -> it is very different from time is compulsory in every narrative, because
whenever you're using a verb, you have to specify whether the action happened before, or
it has consequences in the present, etc. Each novel has its own chronotope.
How do we consider space? It doesn't have to be specified in a narrative, you must
consider that if you have a timing in your narrative, you must have something which moves
in a space, to signify the passing of time. You must have something moving in a space to
express the passing of time, otherwise time is just frozen. A very obvious distinction is
OUTDOOR and INDOOR.
There also are some kinds of categories which are Freudian (running water/ stagnating
water). A Midsummer Night's Dream -> inside Athens / in the woods -> different people.
A house can be warm, cozy, whereas outside can be scary. It depends on the narrative. It
may be used in completely different ways.
SPACE FRAME -> a narrative opens a frame by relying on the reader's knowledge. A
frame contains a kind of narrative sequence. Unless the author is interested in specifying
something about the frame, it is up to the reader to provide the fornishing of the frame. It is
always the reader who provides the details of the space. The reader will provide his or her
own experience -> If a bathroom is described, the reader would think of his own bathroom,
in case he has one. If there's something completely strange in the room, it is the first thing
described by the narrator.

28.09.16

IANNACCARO

THE VICTORIAN AGE

LITERATURE AS A MIRROR OF LIFE
Complexity of a large and comprehensive social world (Dickens, thackeray, trollope,
Bronte, George Eliot)
General attitude -> the power of art as a representation of life as it is. It's having a camera
getting a very distant view of reality, which is visible from a distance -> completely as it is
in its organization.

REALISM
REALISTIC NOVEL -> representing a (social) world that shares the features of the one we
inhabit (mostly middle class sociality)
Belief, faith, of the possibility of representing reality as it is, of how it is constructed.
NARRATIVE
For the majority of the victorian readers: entertainment, spur to represent and denounce
social problems (to get to know them better), meant to tech.
Ethics in a way, morality, and art are linked, are perceived as one thing. If you're a good
victorian gentleman, you're supposed to read something that is improving. Literature is
seen S something which elevates our human standard. Many novels are either linked with
the woman question, or the question of the other, or the climate change -> art for moral,
ethical problems.

Queen Victoria died in 1901, Edward VII succeeded her until 1910. He was king of the unit
Kingdom and the British dominions, and Emperor of India.
Then we have king George V (1910-1936 - House of Windsor) king of the unit Kingdom
and the British dominions, and Emperor of India.
King Edward VIII (shortly reigned in 1936, abdicated) king of the unit Kingdom and the
British dominions, and Emperor of India.
King George VI (reigned 1936-1952 - House of Windsor) king of the unit Kingdom and the
British dominions, and Emperor of India (until independence).
Queen Elizabeth II (1952-today)

19TH-CENTURY THEATRE
Very quick survey: see Norton introductions and M. Rose's volume

Flourishing theatrical activity, variety of entertainments:

 Many remakes. Translation and adaptation (f.e. Shakespearean plays remade for
the victorian stage) were very common.
 Theatre as 'global spectacle' : various theatrical languages, not only verbal.
Scenery, costumes, theatrical devices, were very important elements. Victorian
theatre has reached the technical contractions to make descriptions very rich, very
realistic.
 Dance, melodrama, musical, music hall, pantomime, burlesques.
 The theatre was very popular also among Novelists, like Dickens, Thackeray,
Tennyson and Browning (a poet, but he wrote dramatic monologues in his poetry)

Theatres in London were always full, there were a lot of writing experiments.
Performances were everywhere, many remakes (translations, but also adaptations)

PLAYWRITING
FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY:
Playwriting as an activity was underpaid and undervalued. It was oftenmore a question of
remake and adaptation than of finding new languages. Mainly lack of experimentation.
SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY:
Playwrights are better paid and better considered. "Dramatic Copywright Act" in 1833,
then further implemented.
A sort of theatrical renaissance towards the end of the century with people like Wilde and
Shaw.

THE PROBLEM OF CENSORSHIP

Censorship on plays was very active (it was abolished only in 1968!). The Lord
Chamberlain was in charge of the licensing of plays in England until 1968. Problems of
censorship -> either politic or moral. Offense of morality was seen as an offense to the
state in general.

SHAW ON CENSORSHIP
George Bernard Shaw writing in1909 on Censorship and Theatre Licensing.
"Statement of the evidence in chief of George Bernard Shaw before the Joint-Committee
on Stage Plays (Censorship and Theatre Licensing)"
What is the statement about?
It is Shaw's defence of the theatre against the assaults of the British Stage Censorship
system in 1909. Thought-provoking criticism of the tyranny of public opinion =
victorian moralism and conformism.
He deplores the zealous practices of the Lord chamberlain directed towards his own stage
productions
He provocatively defines himself a specialist in immoral heretical plays
ON IMMORALITY -> Immorality should be protected jealously against the attack of those
who have no standard except the standard of custom,and who regard any attack on
custom -- that is, on morals -- as an attack on society, on religion, and on virtue.
He says -> If this is immoral,then we have to protect immorality. If immorality goes against
what is custom, then let's protect it. We have to reason on things. He raises issues which
are disturbing for other people, so he is doing the right thing. If we continue to think that
the standards of moral and immoral are custom, we are staying fixed. He would paint a
prostitute, f.e., and focus on the problems society has on the image of a prostitute ->
showing social problems even though showing the audience. Unsettle the tradition.
Morality is hiding the pronlems

END OF THE CENTURY "NEW DRAMA"

Fruit of the combination of various things:

 Improving of copyright laws. It's a legal question,that helped the production of new
plays.
 Birth of new theatres and theatrical associations -> new people who put money,
more actors, more plays. -> new institutions mean also people who are ready to
change the content of plays.
 A more demanding and sophisticated public-> new proposal ofor looking at the
world and of shaping arts.
 The intensisying of cultural exchanges (with France, America, ...) that brings more
variety and taste of experimentation.

WILDE AND SHAW

Late Victorians, but also forerunners of 20th century drama
Wilde -> sparkling wit, paradoxes, verbal play, intention to shock (and sooth) middle-class
complacency; but also serious reflection and critique on social/ political / feminist issues.
He denounce any hipocritical aspect he saw in his society, in a hilarious way.
Shaw -> another kind of wit = provocative paradox meant to tease and disturb, to
challenge complacency of the audience. PROBLEM PLAYS.
-> Both wanted to unsettle, shock and (in the case of Shaw) to a certain degree even to
alienate the audience = this will become one hallmark of modern drama. In order to
change things, you have to take a distance -> this is a spectacle of theatre, but also a
spectacle of the world. You are responsible, if the world is like this, it is because we want it
to be like this, if we want to change it, we have to do it. (Shaw says it in a more violent
way, Wilde instead says it ironically).

OSCAR WILDE
THE PREFACE TO THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
This is his manifesto = a public proclamation of intention. He's trying to unsettle what the
people of his time thought about art. His slogan -> ART FOR ART'S STAKE.
It was written for the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), but it was censored.
His publisher asked him to change his texts, which he did.
So he wrote the praface in 1891, telling the reader how it has to be read. He doesn't
speack about his own novel, but about the artist, the reader, the critique, in general. It's an
occasion of saying what he thought in a very explosive way.
Wide also wrote an essay entitled The Artist
He was very well renowned for being a very valuable critic. The critic perceives the beauty
firstly. The importance of being Earnest is full of aphorism.
What is not art? What is necessary for art and what is not? BEAUTY is absolutely
necessary. MORALITY whereas is not a constituent of art. You don't have to justify a work
of art through morals, but art is for art's sake. He doesn't say what is good writing, a text
can be very well written, but it could not be art.
Criticism is autobiography. If you're a bad critic, you're talking about your own life. If you're
a good critic, the same. The way in which you rad a book, has more to do with the reader's
life than to the work itself. The reader's are responsible for the reception of the book. The
artist and his work are responsible only for the esthetic part of what is said.
Each of us responds to a book in a different way. You know longer have a community
recognising what's in a book, but a single reader putting his own autobiography in it.
Morality can be there, you can represent any moral person (Dorian Gray is brought to
become immoral). But art has its own parameters, you have to judge art through esthetics,
not through moral. No artist is ever morbid (=morboso), the artist can express everything.
All artists at once surface and symbol. -> literature is the verbal representation of the
reality we know. Representation of lives through verbal means. This representation has a
surface (the language) and a symbol (through language you can go deep in various
meanings). It is the meaning which is meant by a symbol. The verbal mean and the
meaning you want tho reach. When you're trying to find a meaning, it is dangerous
because of the INTERPRETATION -> it is up to the reader, the responsibility of what you
see behind a work of art. WILDE is telling his society that his audience has to see their
own corruption. There a two different worlds -> the writer's and the reader's. It is up to the
reader to go beyond the surface and find the meaning.
He's showing off, he's trying to shake. A work of art is there to be admired -> it is useless,
but you just have to enjoy it, because it is perfect and beautiful.
So Wilde is trying to break down every millenial thought of art as a way to teach, as a way
of spreading moral thoughts.