Transcript A two-faced reality

A two-faced reality
Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2012
A two-faced reality
1. The British Empire
During the reign of Queen Victoria, Great
Britain
ruled over a wide and powerful empire.
An area of 4 million people
more than
400 million squares miles.
British Empire throughout the World,
19th century, Private Collection
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A two-faced reality
1. The British Empire
1887 Golden Jubilee
1897 Diamond Jubilee
Blue countries already
belonged to the UK
Orange new conquered
lands
Hong-Kong
1841
1877
Empress of India
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Egypt
1882
Boer war
1886
1884
Sudan
Australia and New Zeland
1902
1899
Burma
A two-faced reality
1. The British Empire
After the 1857 Indian Mutiny
• India came under direct rule
by Britain;
• Queen Victoria was crowned
Empress of India in 1877.
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A two-faced reality
1. The British Empire
The British also occupied
•Australia and New Zealand;
•parts of China – including Hong Kong in 1841;
•Burma in 1886;
•Egypt in 1882;
•Sudan in 1884;
•South Africa in 1902, after the Boer War.
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A two-faced reality
1. The British Empire
The Victorians believed that
•the ‘races’ of the world
were divided by physical
and intellectual differences;
•some were destined to be
led by others;
•it was an obligation imposed by God on the British
to impose their superior way of life, their institutions,
law and politics on native peoples.
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A two-faced reality
2. Rudyard Kipling: The White
Man’s Burden
• A poem written in 1899 to give advice to
the United States on the occasion of the
annexation of the Philippines
• It contains the author’s famous phrase, ‘the white man’s
burden’
• The bard of the English Empire and came to symbolise the
belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.
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A two-faced reality
2. Rudyard Kipling : The White
Man’s Burden
‘Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive’s need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.’
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Speaking to an
American, who
recently colonised
Philippines
Responsibility
of coloniser:
burden
Darwin’s theory
A two-faced reality
3. Charles Darwin and evolution
1859 Charles Darwin published
On the Origin of Species.
• His theory of natural selection
discarded the version of creation
given by the Bible, it seemed to
show that the strongest survived
and the weakest deserved to be
defeated.
• Stress on the godless element of
chance involved in evolutionary
variation.
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Charles Darwin
A two-faced reality
3. Charles Darwin and evolution
1871: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
Theory of evolution
• all living creatures have taken their forms through a slow
process of change and adaptation in a struggle for
survival;
• favourable physical conditions determine the survival of a
species;
• unfavourable ones determine its extinction;
• man evolved, like any other animal, from less highly
organised forms, namely from a monkey.
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A two-faced reality
4. The Victorians and crime
The Victorians believed crime could be beaten
• Prison acts (1865 and 1877).
• Creation of new police forces.
Impact on small theft
on the streets
There were occasional
panics linked to particular
appalling offences
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Street robbery, called
‘garrotting’
The murders of Jack
the Ripper (1888)
A two-faced reality
4. The Victorians and crime
Domestic violence rarely
came before the courts:
tolerated because committed
in the private sphere.
publicising of such behaviour
bad reputation to the family
The case of Jack The Ripper
was the most famous case
of sexual violence.
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…
4. The Victorians and crime
A two-faced reality
Parliament responded to the problem
with legislation which provided flogging
as well as imprisonment for offenders.
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A two-faced reality
4. The Victorians and crime
Violence, especially
violence with a
sexual connotation,
sold newspapers.
The press created
sensations out of minor
incidents.
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A two-faced reality
4. The Victorians and crime
The criminals
•At the beginning of the century
criminal offenders
individuals in the lower
reaches of the working class.
•By the middle of the century
‘criminal classes’
social groups stuck at the
bottom of society.
•Towards the end of the century
the criminal
an individual suffering from some
form of behavioural abnormality that had been either inherited
or encouraged by dissolute parents.
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A two-faced reality
5. Aestheticism
Developed in France with
Théophile Gautier (1811–72)
It reflected:
•the sense of frustration and uncertainty
of the artist;
•his reaction against the materialism and
the restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie;
•his need to re-define the role of art;
•the French artists withdrew from the political
and social scene;
•‘escaped’ into aesthetic isolation.
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Théophile Gautier
A two-faced reality
5. Aestheticism
The bohemian’s protest against the monotony
and vulgarity of bourgeois life led to an unconventional
existence, the pursue of sensations and excesses, and
the cult of art and beauty.
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A two-faced reality
5. Aestheticism
Walter Pater (1839–94),
the theorist of the Aesthetic
Movement in England,
•rejected religious faith;
•said that art was the only means to stop
time;
•thought life should be lived ‘as a work of
art feeling all kinds of sensations’.
Aubrey Beardsley, front cover For ‘The YeIIow Book’, January 1895. ‘The YelIow
Book’ was a eading Britìsh journal of the 1890s which was associated with
Aestheticism and Decadence. The magazine contaìned a wide range of literary
and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and
reproductions ofpaintings.
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A two-faced reality
5. Aestheticism
Eternal
Art
Art for art’s sake
No reference to life, morality
The task of the artist  to feel sensations, to be
attentive to the ‘attractive’, the ‘gracious’.
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A two-faced reality
5. Aestheticism
A number of features can be distinguished in
the works of Aesthetic artists:
•
•
•
•
•
•
evocative use of the language of the senses;
excessive attention to the self;
hedonistic attitude;
perversity in subject matter;
disenchantment with contemporary society;
absence of any didactic aim.
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A two-faced reality
6. The dandy
• Belonged to the upper classes
 opposite to the bohemian.
• Elegance as a reason of life and
‘life as a work of art’.
• Interested in beauty and literary
works  opposite to the didacticism
of the Victorian writers of the first
half of the age.
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