Synthesis of the lesson of the 27^th of November.

During the lesson we had spoken about the Modern Age. In particular the teacher asked to us what is the reason why during Modernism people refused Victorian principles.

They were no longer credible because there were political, economic and religious crisis, because there were some tensions caused by wars and because new currents of thought were born.

As for political problems British supremacy came to an end because Great Britain, at the end of the First World War, suffered serious damages and USA and Russia took her place and became the new strongest world powers.

Europe suffered an economic crisis characterized by industrialization which did not bring any benefit.

As for religious point of view, Darwin's scientific discoveries (he said that men's lives did not depend by God but by survival instinct) and Nice's new theory of religion (which is referenced in the famous phrase “God is dead”) “convinced” people to stop believing in God.

During Modernism also the idea of art changed. As a matter of fact art finished to have an utilitarian purpose as during the Victorian Age.

Literature suffered some changes too. As a matter of fact new techniques were adopted dure Modernism. They are the stream of consciousness, the shift of point of view and the interior monologue.

As for philosophical point of view, more intellectuals characterized the Modern Age. For example S. Freud, C. Jung , A. Einstein, H. Bergson and W. James.

S. Freud in his work “Interpretation of Dreams” affirmed that people's behaviour depends on three parts of their minds: the Id (instinctive part), the Ego (concious part) and the Super-Ego (part that control man's social condition).

In the “Psychology of the Unconscious” C. Jung argued that a basic element of man0s unconscious minds is formed by his racial memory, by his primitive memory.

Instead, A. Einstein's “General Theory of Relativity” affirmed that space and time did not exist as separate.

H. Bergson and W. James took it and elaborated their theory about time too. They argue that is an illusion to think of time as an independent medium which contains events in a certain sequence.

During the lesson we had talked about “The Waste Land”. It is one of T. S. Eliot's works.

He was a most relevant poet of the Modern Age. His work, published in 1922, is a kind of epic poem. It is a very difficult text because it contains more intertextuality. As a matter of fact more languages are spoken in the poem and more cultures are described (for example: English, French, German, ...).

He did it because the Waste land is a metaphor of Europe, as a matter of fact Europe during Modernism were waste, sterile,...).

Writing it, Eliot used a particular form of poetry: the dramatic monologue.

Only two Victorian writers (A. Tennyson and R. Browning) used it before.

The dramatic monologue is a transformation of the traditional monologue. As a matter of fact the dramatic monologue gives to the reader the idea that there is a voice that speak and that voice believe to be alone.

The poem start with an epigraph. The epigraph is a reference to the Sibylla Cumana.

The epigraph starts with the phrase: “I want to die”.

We reflected on the first four lines of the text:

“APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”

In particular we reflected on the word “April” and on the word “lilac”.

T. S. Eliot said that April is cruel. It is a reference to “The Canterbury Tales”. As a matter of fact Chaucer in his work spoke about a sweet April. April is the month of the spring, the month when the land is fertile. So he used the adjective cruel to connote April because during modernism the land (Europe) was not “fertile”, but it was “waste”.

Instead, reflecting on the word “lilac” we hypothesized that it is referred to a particular Priests' dress. The violet dress that Priests uses when they celebrate funeral.