An effettive summary of the novelists and poets between the Victorian age and 20thC lit.

1. LITERATURE PILLS
HOW TO FOCUS ON WHAT IS NEW

2. Charles Dickens
Themes: good vs evil, the
villain’s punishment, hardship,
childhood, vice vs virtue,
humanitarianism, mercy as a
sort of social reward,
industrial revolution, town vs
countryside, importance of
money and wealth as a sort
of prize, responsibility, social
problems, social clash, a
sense of social justice,
poverty, crime, family
relations
STYLE
-long fascinating
narrations
- - a large stock of
memorable minor
characters
- -a chronological
development of
events
- - descriptive skills
- -omniscient narrator
- - a sense of subtle
humor and parody
- -vivid dialogue
-

3. Robert Louis Stevenson
Themes: the limits of
science, sciences ethics,
addiction, double, crime,
good vs evil, the villain’s
punishment, the clash
between the individual and
the society, the difficulty of
standing social conventions,
the impossibility of
penetrating the secrets of
nature, the urge for freedom,
mask and social disguise.
Style
4 narrators
a detective story
intriguing descriptions
he starts in media res
time and setting are
well visible
suspence
dialogues well set
out

4. Oscar Wilde
Themes: A sense of beauty
as something unattainable,
vice vs virtue, success and
its outcome, crime, youth vs
the old, fear for aging, a
sense of loss, instinct, social
conventions as a weight,
almost impossible to bear,
the double, the role of the
artist as a mission, a sort of
responsibility, education
connected to a moral
purpose
STYLE
Appeal to all sense
An obtrusive narrator
Powerful dialogue
An acute sense of
humor
Careful descriptions
Time and setting well
arranged

5. MODERNISM

6. Ernest Hemingway
Themes: the responsibility
of a social role, life led to
extremes, struggle for
survival, danger as a
challenge and as an
opportunity, various levels
of heroism, courage vs
cowardice, sense of honor
and respect towards oneself
rather than towards the
others, war as a field were
all instincts are re-awoken.
Style
- hard-boiled characters
- lack of sentimentality
- a master at creating
dialogues
- a meticulous care for
linguistic registers
- a technical use of
vocabulary
- an unobtrusive narrator

7. James Joyce
Themes: paralysis, sense of
loss, escape, failure,
discomfort, passivity, fear
for future, importance of
past, tradition, loneliness,
alienation, crisis, identity,
difficulty of communication,
lack of a real communion,
sense of responsibility, life
vs death
Style
Stream of consciousness
technique
Symbolism
Epiphany
Allusive use of language
Musical pattern
Free direct and indirect
speech

8. Langston Hughes
Themes: a racial awakening,
freedom vs slavery, looking
for a new identity, reliance
on man’s potentialities,
Black pride, awareness of a
new role in a multicultural
setting, a lurking sense of
melancholy, movement as a
form of vital strength, life as
a gift and an opportunity,
something precious to
defend.
Style
- Musicality
- - new verse forms
- Allusive language
- Explosion of sounds
recalling blues and jazz
- An original assemblage of
words
- An emotional use of
punctuation

9. T. S. Eliot
Alienation, emptiness, war
as cultural landscape,
sterility of the present age in
comparison with the fertility
of the past, history as a
source of inspiration,
loneliness, destruction, lack
of values, hopelessness.
Style
Objective Correlative
Lack of punctuation
Symbolism
Quotations
Different sources
Archaisms together with
neologisms

10. TOWARDS A FUTURE PERSPECTIVE

11. George Orwell
Themes: the effects of
dictatorship, slavery vs
freedom, love as a form of
transgression, privacy,
decency in human relations,
the danger of
totalitarianism, the power
enacted by advertising and
social media, ignorance,
social justice, trust,
responsibility, torture.
Style
Newspeak
An unobtrusive narratore
A disquieting atmosphere
A dystopian novelA
A narrator in a traditional
way
Slogans
Oxymora

12. Ray Bradbury
Themes: walking as an act
of transgression, social
control, the role of the
machine, mass
communication and its
effects, memories, being
different, loneliness, social
conventions, fear for future,
pressure to conform.
Style
A narrator with an internal view
Unsentimental bitter tone
A few clues to render the
situation
A fantascientifico short-story
with an unexpected ending

13. Roald Dahl
Themes: good vs evil, a
sense of macabre,
ambiguity, perverseness,
sense of fear, the villain is
not punished, a bitter
reward, vulnerability, a
misleading vision of
mankind, the unexpected,
the mysterious in mankind,
criminal minds, sado-
masochism.
Style
- Allusive language
- a large deal of symbols
- Suspence
- A gloomy atmosphere
- A bitter tone

14. Michael Morpurgo
Themes: nostalgia, growing
up, a sense of loss, love as
a living force, life as a
continuous struggle, war as
a loss, a tragedy, parental
responsibility, nature as a
silent mate, destiny.
Style
Epistolary together with
narration
Melancholic tone
Some vivid clues to give voice
to emotions

15. “Thank you for standing me”.
Mrs Valentina Mariano