Inglese

It was a complex and contradictory era: it was the age of progress, stability, great social reforms but it was also characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest. The Victorians promoted a code of values that reflect the world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on personal duty, hard work, respectability and charity. In thi per

Prospero and Miranda live in a cave on the island which is also inhabited by Ariel, a gentle spirit of the air Sycorax had imprisoned in the trunk of a tree. Prospero released Ariel and made him his agent, and the ugly, half human Caliban. Caliban deeply resents Prospero as he believes that he is the rightful ruler of the island. He plots with some of K

Defoe and the realist novel
Defoe’s works are written in the form of fictional autobiography (a sort of diary or journal) to make the stories more realistic. There in no real plot, just a chronological series of connected events with a single protagonist. The protagonist, male or female, must struggle to overcome a series of misfortunes, using only

In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper's "unheard" melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because

I don’t read “natural” as referring to “Nature”. I think it means the kind of instinctive (i.e. untaught) attitude that a child has, compared with the more artificial piety that can be the product of religious instruction. Wordsworth treats a child’s natural feelings of wonder, joy and awe at the sight of beautiful things as a manifestation of piety in

The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice - “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”- establishes the centrality of advantageous marriage, a fundamental social value of Regency England. The arrival of Mr. Bingley is the event that sets the novel in motion. He delivers

During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, writing a series of pamphlets on divorce, the freedom of the press, and support for the regicides. He also served as Latin Secretary for foreign languages in Cromwell's government, a position which can be compared to a correspondent of foreign affairs. During

Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. Here, a farmer discovers him and initially treats him as little more than an animal. The farmer eventually sells Gulliver to the queen. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver is often repul

• The melancholy and sad tone;
• The cult of simple and primitive, rural life;
• The description of a wild, gloomy nature, often connected with night and darkness;
• The choice of cemeteries and ruins;
• The respect of classical proportion and poetic form.
The two most popular trends of the period were “Ossianic” and “Graveyard” poet