Comenius Weblog

The artistic production can be defined as the action of many writers ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOWiQlmK4M )  sculptors and painters….who, through the years, tried to give voice to their land, without ignoring people’s problems. It was in 1800 that art and, specifically, literature ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIKr_Ngq1PQ )  start to understand their social dimension. In those years Madame de Stael published “about literature and its relation with the social institutions” and her work represents the first try to unify the basic knowledge of literature and society. It was only in the second half of the 7^th century that art urged to have a more incisive role in the contemporary society: the Italians were trying to get rid of the occupants and wished to achieve a unified state guided by an Italian king while in France, the workers that had little salaries and suffered terrible working conditions, forced Louis d’ Orleans to leave the title, proclaiming the second Republic. In this context of political and social changes, the artist couldn’t escape, hiding in a mythological world, as he did in the past.

Realism in art, Naturalism in literature wanted to explain reality as it was, with its contradictions and miseries.

“The stones breaker” by Gustave Courbet seems an iconographic representation of a character traced from Zola’s novel or Dickens or even the Italian Giovanni Verga. In this period, in fact, the French writer, Emile Zola, shows, in his works, his interest in the workers, in the everyday people.

In England, in the same period, literature is greatly interested in the social problems.

“Hard Times” by Charles Dickens, published in 1854, was born from the writer’s observation of the conditions traced in some industrial cities such as Manchester and Pristnam: the workers’ life conditions, their hard relationships with their employees, the health and the public education problems. Dickens social commitment seems superficial and never incisive.

In the Sicilian Giovanni Verga’ s novels (and, above all, in his masterpiece “I Malavoglia”) we find out that the main theme is represented by the way poor people survive in the south of Italy but, indifference and resignation, are feelings that don’t help them to save themselves from their misery. “Gente di Aspromonte” (People from Aspromonte) by Corrado Alvaro mixes together some elements of the landscape with the local costumes, some social themes with the psychological ones, passion with sensuality. When the main character, Antonello Argirò, after having destroyed the cattle of the wealth Mezzatesta family and after having distributed the whole meat to the poor, he is imprisoned but happy, because, finally, he can talk about justice and oppression.

Here’s a presentation prepared by Vaninaand Olivia about more people of the class!Click and get to know them!

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